


The Coldest Winter We Ever Spent...

by ProtoNeoRomantic



Series: Seasons Out of Time [1]
Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Complicated Relationships, Demons, Episode: s01e06 The Pack, Episode: s02e19 I Only Have Eyes For You, Episode: s02e22 Becoming Part 2, Episode: s03e01 Anne, F/M, Family, Flashbacks, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abortion, Inter-generational Romance, Literary References & Allusions, M/M, Magic, Memories, Miscarriage, Miserable Love, Mixed Emotions, Moral Ambiguity, Older Man/Younger Woman, Pregnancy, Psychics, Rape/Non-con Elements, Runaway Buffy, Secret Relationship, Secrets, Seers, Slayer-Watcher Relationship, Spells & Enchantments, Summer of Giles 2014, Teen Pregnancy, Torture, Vampires, Visions, Watchers, Watchers Diaries, What Doesn't Kill You Can Still Seriously Mess You Up, gypsies, inappropriate relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-24
Updated: 2014-08-01
Packaged: 2018-02-10 05:11:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 8
Words: 26,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2012193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProtoNeoRomantic/pseuds/ProtoNeoRomantic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Buffy/Giles rewrite of the summer between BtVS seasons 2 and 3.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Death of Spring

**Author's Note:**

> Cover Art by Katekat1010

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I wanna torture you. I used to love it and its been a long time." 
> 
> BtVS 2.22 "Becoming"

 

The floor was cold. So cold. More intense even than the pain in Rupert's head. The world felt muted, far away. There was nothing near, nothing to reach out for. Nothing but his body and the cold, cold floor. And the dark. A dark with someone, something moving in it. Slowly, the thing resolved itself, horrifically, inevitably, into Angel.

“Hello, Rupert, old buddy,” the monster began to ramble. He was trying to needle his victim, but Giles wasn't listening to his words, only his tone.  _You are only coming through in waves. Your lips move..._ He heard arrogance, impatience, irritation, strain. He heard neither triumph nor sorrow. So at least he had not killed Buffy during Giles's lapse in consciousness, probably had not laid a hand on her in fact. Angel had merely lured Buffy away so that Drusilla could have a shot at  _him_ , Giles realized. But why? He listened closer, made more of an effort to follow what was, in fact turning out to be more or less an explanation. Angel needed an expert to help him figure out the ritual. As if it weren't obvious!

Giles was amused and quietly contemptuous. Vampires! No head for symbolism. No... appreciation for the value and power of pure, honest,  _personal_  sacrifice. They always expected someone else to do the bleeding. Well, Rupert was used to bleeding, was used to sacrifice. He had been tortured more than once in his life, and he could take quite a bit without breaking down. He simply had to keep his chin up, to suffer and, if need be, to die. With dignity. With honor. For the sake of the world. And for Buffy.

Hours passed. Rupert kept himself composed through most of it. But eventually there were tears and cries of agony, of horror, of disgust. When he was naked, bleeding and tentatively interested in death, he felt the hands of his monstrous captor roving over his helpless, exposed flesh in a new, more sinister way. His interest in death was suddenly keen, not at all tentative. He flailed madly at Angel, trying to provoke him to more conventional violence.

Angel ignored his impotent resistance. “Mmmmm,” the vampire purred, exhaling the cold, wet breath of death against his ear, “So brave. So strong. You're impressive, Rupert. You really are.”

Dignity went by the wayside. Rupert cried out in terror and revulsion. When he called out, “Oh dear God! Please, God, no!” it was only in one narrow sense 'in vain.'

The beast fell upon him, pinning him against that cold, hard floor. Again and again, he stabbed him anally with his merciless, adamant cock. That rod of cold, inhuman flesh was as hard, as uncompromising, as the stone on which they lay. The word 'agony' fell far short of describing the punishment it dealt with each unforgiving stroke.

Rupert had hoped, had prayed, that this vile act was a prelude to murder, but when Angel groaned with an intensity of pleasure near to pain and rolled off of him at last, laughing with delight, he sensed that the process of 'softening up' was far from over. He was allowed to crawl about on the floor, to slither back into the torn remnants of his clothing, as Angel's sterile seed dripped from his battered rectum onto the barren stone.  
  
This little respite, this small mercy, was intended, he realized, to make him feel grateful towards his captors, to give him hope for the greater mercy that could be his if only he would relent and do as he was told. But Rupert's resolve was stiffened rather than softened by this transparent attempt at manipulation. Dignity or no dignity, he would hold on to his honor. If Angel learned the secret to destroying the world, it would not be from Rupert Giles.

~~~~

Spike sat tensely gripping the sides of his wheelchair. He struggled to keep up with the relatively lucid drift of what Drusilla was saying, to ignore what was happening in the next room. The screaming had stopped. All that remained were the sounds of flesh slapping against flesh, Angel's occasional grunting, and the pitiful mewling and weeping of his victim. But these small noises echoed endlessly through the large, marbled rooms and corridors of the mansion. If Buffy Summers could hear what was happening in that room, neither he nor Drusilla would have a prayer in hell of making it out of Sunnydale alive.

For a moment, Spike considered tying Dru up and gagging her under false pretenses, then dragging her away while Angel was still distracted. But the place was crawling with minions, and he was damned if he was going to risk raising an alarm now, tempting Angel to finish with him what he had started with Rupert Giles.

At last, Angel let out a deep groan of finality. Moments later, grinning with delight, he entered the room, pulling a silken robe around his sweaty body. “You're awfully cheerful,” Spike groused, “For someone who is failing so spectacularly at such a simple task.”

“Patience, my boy,” Angel growled impatiently. “I know exactly what I'm doing.”

“So he gave you the information then, did he?” Spike snarked. “Or maybe you've forgotten what the goal of all this was supposed to be. Got busy making honeymoon plans perhaps? Picking out china patterns maybe?”

“Ha,” Angel scoffed, “That's your button, Spike, not mine. I know where everyone's buttons are and I can push them any time I want.” He smiled cruelly. “Just ask Dru.”

Drusilla whined hopefully, pitifully, like a dog who hopes, maybe after days of being ignored, it might finally be on the verge of getting its ears scratched. But Spike knew, it hadn't been that long since Angel had pushed every single one of her buttons for her, not nearly. The lascivious smile that spread across the bastard's big, broody, stupid, extra-foreheady face said that he knew it too and had absolutely intended to remind him. Spike said nothing. He fought down his rising temper with the knowledge that Angel would be dead soon.

“Careful, my sweet,” Drusilla cooed, adoration vying with concern. “Don't let him die before you get to question him again.”

“Relax,” Angel assured her offhandedly, “I was  _gentle_  with him.”

Drusilla was both reassured and amused, but Spike was deeply worried. He knew what Angel's definition of 'gentle' was. His arse still hurt every time he thought about how very, very 'gentle' Angel could be.

“Give him half an hour to pull himself together,” Angel predicted with cheerful confidence, “to remember that he doesn't really want to die just yet if he can help it, then he'll fold at the first sharp slap. I think I'll go take a shower and get dressed,” he added casually, “I want to look good for my big day.”

Angel was probably right, Spike knew. Giles was sure to be moments from cracking. “Excuse me,” he said to Dru, once Angel had disappeared upstairs, “I think I'll take our 'guest' a glass of water.”

When he entered the room, the librarian looked up, startled. Then his gaze hardened slightly, heartsick, but defiant. “Well,” Giles asked bitterly, “Why do I even bother getting dressed?”

“As if,” Spike scoffed, holding out the glass of water that was his pretext for this conversation. Rupert batted it out of his hand, shattering it against the stone floor. Water and glass splashed both of them. Spike growled angrily, lifting Rupert by the collar and pulling him close, face to face, practically in his lap. He would not risk being overheard.

“She's coming,” he hissed. “Hold out. Be ready. Buffy is coming here. We are going to kill Angel.” With that, he tossed the man carelessly to the stone floor, turned and wheeled himself from the room. He hoped he had stiffened the poor bugger's spine enough to drag things out until Buffy could arrive. But she had better hurry.

~~~~

Rupert lay in a battered heap, trying to make sense of what was happening to him. Angel was pulling out all the stops to break his will and Spike, of all creatures, was encouraging him to hold out, bringing him purported assurances of rescue. From Buffy. Really, he couldn't help but doubt it, this idea that Spike was somehow allied with Buffy. But the bare hope that Buffy knew where he was, that she was coming for him, was irresistible. He clung to it gratefully as Angel returned to resume the hours of torment.

Giles held out. As the monster battered his body in every horrid way imaginable, the Watcher let his mind rove, wandering back to better times. He lived in memories, far sweeter in the reliving, of times he had only imagined himself to be 'tortured', to be conflicted.

“ _We shouldn't be doing this,” he whispered against Buffy's hot skin. “I'm your Watcher. I'm responsible for you. I ought not...” her hands roamed slowly downwards, over his unresisting body from his shoulders to his ass. “I ought not...” she slid them up under his long tweed coat, caressing as she went, her firm grip landing on the small of his back, pulling him hard against her as she leaned back against the library table._

“ _Shshshsh,” she whispered. Nothing more than that. And yet, that single exhalation expressed such hunger and such love. And suddenly, he was hard against her, very hard._

_Ah gods the way his cock had felt, sliding inside her! The first time, amidst the awe and terror of lines being crossed. The last time, enfolded in the gentle embrace of mutual mourning and regret, living in the reality of a word: 'inevitable'. The two dozen times between, in every state of emotion, none of which approached the pure, holy pleasure of their physical union._

The pain of the blow snapped Giles back to the present. “Are you listening to me?” Angel demanded, brandishing the length of steel pipe with which he had just smashed him in the jaw.

Several of Rupert's teeth were broken. He spit the pieces in Angel's face, suddenly overcome with spite. “Sorry,” he gasped, as coolly as he could manage, which was not very, “I was just thinking of how wonderful it felt to make love to Buffy. How beautiful to hear her say that she'd found someone to satisfy her at last.”

The vampire growled with rage. “That's it!” he shouted. “Somebody bring me a chainsaw!”

Rupert sagged with relief. Okay, if he were being truly honest, partly with bowel liquefying terror, but mostly with relief. And also, not a little satisfaction. He'd done it. He'd held out. It would all be over soon. Rupert Giles was about to die with his honor intact and save the lives of billions in the process. How's that for a bloody hero? For Rupert so loved the world that he gave his only ass....

But no! As ever he had been too optimistic. Spike rolled in once again to rescue him. “...And I don't fancy spending the next month trying to get librarian out of the carpet...” he argued among other things in his effort to settle Angel down. It was an image that gave one pause, certainly. So much so that, though he wanted to resent Spike for robbing him of the means of swift and certain death, he couldn't quite.

A wave of nauseous gratitude rolled over and through Rupert's body and soul. But like a wave crashing endlessly against the ageless shore, it rolled out again as he heard Spike call out to the maddest, vilest demon of their company, “Drusilla, love, do you want to play a game?”

~~~~

“Anne Winters!” Pete called, not for the first time. Finally, the name seemed to register with a young blond woman who stood hesitantly and walked toward him. “Are you Anne Winters?” he demanded skeptically.

Anne smiled nervously. “That's what it says on my application.”

“Okay, whatever,” Pete replied. “You ever worked in a restaurant before, Anne?”

“Oh, gosh yes,” the girl assured him. “Lots um... lots and lots of times. I mean, not lots of... different... times. It's not like I'm constantly getting fired or something! But, you know, lots... of... for a long time.” She finally stammered to a conclusion, settling on a story.

Pete pretended to study the application, so that he could smile to himself behind it. Helen wouldn't have put up with this bullshit for a minute, but Helen wasn't here. “Where?” he asked, just messing with her now, feeling her out. He'd known he was going to hire this girl the first time he had looked at her ass and imagined it bare, bent over the prep counter as he pushed himself inside her. Somehow, he just knew she would be tight and wet and ready for him.

“Where?” she repeated, squirming beautifully. He faked a look of stern attention and waited, while she tried unsuccessfully to remember what she had written down two days ago.

“Yeah, where?” he prompted finally, starting to get a little bit more genuinely annoyed. She had better be a good piece of tail if she was going to be that dumb. “What restaurant?” he clarified, “What town?”

“Sonny's Deli... in... Elmwood?” she guessed at last.

“A deli, is not a restaurant,” Pete pointed out. She looked adorably crestfallen. “But then again,” he relented, grinning, “neither is this dump. I like you,” he added more or less seriously, “You got guts. You're a terrible liar, but you got guts. More importantly,” he lied, “you're the only applicant who doesn't have a rap sheet, or at least one I have to know about and show to Helen. So you're hired.”

“Thank you(?)” she squeaked.

“Alright, whatever,” Pete barked as gruffly as he could manage, “Just get your apron on and get to work.”


	2. It's Not Warm When She's Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I think he'll find her when she wants to be found." 
> 
> BtVS 3.1 "Anne"

Alone in his tiny courtyard, clutching a cup of coffee; hot, black and bitter, Rupert Giles stared at the sunrise unseeing, unmoved by its beauty. His heart was empty, a bottomless pit of regret and despair. He knew the time had come to call Boston again. He knew, but he could not accept it. It was clear to him that, if Gale and her new Slayer came to Sunnydale, it would not be to join him but to replace him. He would be reassigned. A new Watcher would be assigned to find Buffy and bring her back to task. That was the best case scenario.

The Council could, if it so chose, meet out far more serious discipline. For both of them. There was no fathoming how these decisions were made. He might be drummed out or even disappeared. Buffy might be declared a renegade. The Council might hunt her down and kill her. Or tear itself apart trying. He could not be responsible for that. He simply had to find her. He had to look harder.

He stood mechanically and walked through the back door into his kitchen. He thumbed through a small, overstuffed Rolodex that sat on the counter beneath the wall-mounted phone. The card he pulled was yellow and worn with age. The information it contained did not include a phone number.

Rupert lit a burner on his gas range and started an iron skillet heating. Then (because there's never a valuable live animal around when you need one these days) he took out his wallet and pocket knife and improvised a sacrifice by dropping a fifty dollar bill into the frying pan and sprinkling it with a few drops of blood from his own hand. As the edges of the bill began to curl and blacken, Rupert Giles began to chant. Some of the words that rolled from his lips could have been Latin. Some of them.

~~~~

In Sheila Rosenberg's back yard, three teens lay sunning themselves at poolside. Her daughter Willow was propped on her elbows making notes on a Garfield shaped pad that lay before her on the lawn lounger. Her best friend Xander sat sipping casually on a cup of punch. The other boy, some friend of his, Sheila guessed (maybe that Jerry boy she'd heard so much about a while back?) lay on his stomach on another lounger, a newspaper open in front of him. All three kids appeared deep in conversation. Anyone would have thought they were trying to agree on a movie or keeping tabs on their favorite sports teams. Sheila certainly thought so. She was wrong.

“Two more possibles buried today?” Willow Complained. “That makes six on the watch list.”

“Alright,” said Xander, “I'm calling it. Cross Barker off the list.”

“But what if—” Willow started to object.

“Come on, Wil,” Xander argued, “It's been six days.”

“Only five,” Willow corrected him.

“Alright, five,” Xander conceded, “but we still can't be in six places at once.”

“Three places,” Oz interjected.

“That's right!” said Willow with shiny-bright enthusiasm, as if that totally solved the problem. “Barker's in Peaceful Valley with one of the newbies. ...” she looked down her list. “Kathy Ziegler.”

“Yeah, but she just died yesterday,” Xander pointed out, “She won't be up until tomorrow night at least.”

“I don't know,” Willow countered, “burial in less than twenty-four hours, usually means a DB, and it seems like they get up a little faster. I think the formaldehyde slows them down.”

“There's three in Westgate,” Oz pointed out. “How old are they?”

Willow looked at her list again. “Payton Snow died three days ago, buried yesterday. Same goes for Brian Grafton.... And Brice Freed, buried today, died... ahha! Three days ago, too!”

“So that just leaves one over in Elmgrove, right?” Xander asked.

“Willow nodded, “Erika Nucheski,” she confirmed. “Dead four days, buried yesterday.” Willow frowned. “We might have already missed her last night, while we were working Restfield.”

“Same goes for Barker,” Xander pointed out.

“Westgate,” Oz said matter-of-factly, decisively. “Best bet.”

“But... but what are we supposed to do about all of these others?” Willow whined.

“Nothing,” Oz replied, “unless we get done early at Westgate.”

“I wish Buffy was here,” Willow grumbled miserably.

Xander felt like she had stuck a knife in his chest, but he covered it pretty well if he did say so himself. But Oz gave him a look anyway. Unless he was imagining it. He was probably imaging it. “Wil,” he said tensely if not quite angrily, “even Buffy can't be three places at once.”

“I know that,” Willow countered, sounding miserable and maybe just a little defensive. “It's just... I wish that stupid detective would finally get a clue. I mean, I must have told him a hundred times that we were attacked by a tall, twenty-something brunette with two male accomplices that called her 'Drusilla', but somehow, he still keeps insisting that it has to be Buffy!”

“Wil,” Xander reminded her, “she's not going to know when it's safe to come back anyway. None of us knows how to get in touch with her.”

“We don't  _know_  that,” Willow argued, persistent in her halfhearted optimism as usual. “I still say...”

“If Giles was in touch with Buffy,” Xander countered, “why wouldn't he tell us?”

“To protect us,” Willow repeated for the millionth time, “in case we're questioned. So we can't be charged with aiding a fugitive.”

“Yeah,” Xander shot back sarcastically, “just like he's out there protecting us from vampires, every night, you know, pitching in with the team. Except, oh wait. He's not. Our asses are on the line and he's keeping his ass covered.”

Willow was quiet for a beat. Xander had been increasingly pissed at Giles lately. It was almost as if he knew... something he couldn't possibly know. But still... Giles didn't deserve.... “He could be protecting us!” she appealed to Oz for support, “Couldn't he?”

Oz leaned across the space between their chairs and kissed her forehead, but didn't say anything. She hated when he did that, but it wasn't exactly the kind of thing you could say you hated, like, “Hey, I feel belittled and unsupported as a person when you kiss me and ignore what I say.” That was something only her mother would say. Nobody wanted to be like that.

~~~~~~

Once again, as she had done for forty days and forty nights, Anne lay staring at the ceiling in her one-room apartment, watching the shadows crawl towards the hour when she would be force to get up, go to work, and pretend to live her life. She had been awake for hours. She had dreamt again. Badly enough to banish all thought of going back to sleep. It was neither an entirely new dream nor a complete repeat. It was a variation on a theme, one of many.

_Buffy was walking through a beautiful field of green grass and tiny purple flowers. Anne looked on sadly, feeling pity for her. She knew what was coming._

_Buffy stopped and looked down, mildly puzzled, mildly curious. At her feet was a tiny mound of earth, carpeted in blood-red flowers. Flat against the earth at the head of the mound, her eye caught a glint of gray granite in the grass._

_Buffy knelt, her round belly brushing against the rounded earth, and pushed the tender green blades away so that she could read the single word chiseled into the stone: MOM. Buffy stiffened in horror. As Anne looked on, helpless, tiny pink hands shot out of the ground and pulled her down until she lay flat against it, until the swell of her belly and the swell of the earth were one and what was buried there moved inside of her._

Anne shook herself. It was not even a dream she was having anymore, just a memory of a dream. She was a fool to let it bother her like this. If there was one fact of which Anne Winters was absolutely certain, it was that she was not pregnant. While it was true that she had still not had a period in the two and a half months since her miscarriage, she had not had sex either. And she hardly ever felt really nauseous anymore. Unless she tried to skip breakfast.

Anyway, that was not her life. Angel, Giles, the miscarriage, all of it... that was Buffy's life. And Buffy's life was over.

~~~~~~

Slowly, as Giles persisted in his chanting, a purple mist that had been gathering unobtrusively in a corner of his kitchen for some time resolved itself into a vaguely humanoid figure. “Rupert Giles,” said a commanding voice, “you have summoned me because your heart cries out for one you cannot find.”

“Yes,” Giles admitted earnestly, “I must find Buffy Summers at once.”

“As you know,” the demon admonished him, “the dimensions of space that exist on this plane are strange to me.”

“I know,” Giles acknowledged.

“Perhaps I can tell you how she is,” it warned. “I cannot tell you where.”

“I understand,” Giles affirmed.

“What can you give me of hers?” the creature asked.

Giles took a small emerald cross on a gold chain from beneath his collar and dropped it into the velvety, purple hand that was extended to him.

“This was hers only for a short time,” the demon began, turning the object over and over in its hand, thinking. “She loved it intensely, then rejected it utterly.”

“ _I bought this for you,” he said sheepishly, handing her the little gold sack. Then, worriedly, he added, “Don't open it here.”_

“It is a symbol,” the demon continued ponderously, “of your betrayal.”

“ _Please,” he said, trying to sound cheerful, but sounding grave anyway, “Come in. I was just making us some tea.”_

“ _Wow, tiny finger food,” Buffy commented,doing only a slightly better job of sounding lighthearted,“I feel like I'm at some kind of reception or something.”_

“ _Well, I didn't think you'd want anything... erm heavy for lunch,” he mumbled apologetically, avoiding eye contact. There was a moment of awkward silence._

“ _Giles, share,” Buffy demanded gently. “What's bothering you? Is it the...whole... miscarriage... thing?” Now they were both avoiding each other's eyes. A hell of a way to carry on a conversation. But more silence could not change what had to be said._

“ _Buffy,” he plunged forward, feeling sick with himself. “I know this is not a good time, but I doubt there will ever be a good time. That is, I mean, obviously, the right time to have said anything was... some time ago. But, well, we need to talk about our... about our uh... our relationship.”_

_Buffy sat there, blinking at him, stunned. Like a little lamb that had been knock on the head but hadn't died. Giles wanted to pull her into his arms, to sooth and comfort her. To promise her his heart, mind, body and soul until the end of time. Instead he said, “Buffy, we've both known from the beginning that we should never—that I should never have—”_

“ _You're right,” Buffy said shortly, bitterly, cutting him off in mid-sentence, “The time to say this to me is long past.”_

“ _Buffy, I'm sorry,” he tried to explain, “I just—I'm not what you—I can't be what—”_

“ _You know what,” Buffy seethed, cutting him off again, “I get it.” She pulled the emerald cross from around her neck and threw it on top of the tray of tiny finger sandwiches with its suddenly ridiculous boarder of little shortbread cookies. “It was all a big mistake,” she said, wiping at her eyes with her sleeve. Anger struggled in her tone with sorrow, resignation and a shallow bluff of indifference. “Let's just... forget it ever happened.” She laughed brokenly. “I mean, it's not like we have to make a big deal(!)” she added bitterly, her voice rising in pitch and dropping in volume, almost as if she were speaking to herself. Or aside to someone who wasn't there._

Too long a moment had passed. “Is it sufficient?” Giles finally managed. “Can you sense her?”

The creature nodded, letting the gold chain dangle from his hand, watching as it swirled about, holding tight to the cross itself. “She is alive. She suffers. Her heart is half full and half empty. Walls in the wrong places keep out the love and let the pain in. She desires emptiness. Oblivion. But not enough to seek it in death. She seeks nothing. She continues. She maintains.”

“Is she alone?”

“She is lonely. Unloved. Unnoticed by those around her. Yes. She is alone. The vampire is not with her. She mourns him.”

Giles was embarrassed by his own transparency, but he plowed forward. “What can you tell me about her physical condition?” he asked.

“More than you wish to know.”

“Let me be the judge of that.”

“Very well,” it said. “She needs sleep. She is too thin, but not starving. She is with child, for the second time.”

Giles snorted softly. “Well, I was warned,” he admitted.

The creature smiled with deep, quiet amusement, but continued, tactfully, in another line. “The sun warms her skin. It is morning sun. Summer sun. Like the sun that shines through this window. The hour and day are the same.”

Giles's heart hammered with sudden excitement. Buffy hadn't run to the other side of the globe then. She was still on the West Coast. Perhaps even still in California. “Thank you,” Giles murmured, when it was clear the creature had no more to say. “That should be... most helpful.”

The creature shrugged indifferently, stepped back into the corner and dissipated. Rupert stood watching it go, treading the waters of emotion, trying to keep his head above the waves. Relieved as he was to hear confirmation that Buffy was alive, Angel dead, he had been all but certain of those facts already. He was hit hard by the 'news' that Buffy was depressed and traumatized, unsurprising though it was. There wasn't a word unpleasant enough to describe his reaction to the unexpected blow of Buffy's second pregnancy, but jealousy was one of its uglier notes.

Rupert knew he had no right to feel angry or betrayed. He had long since released any claim he had ever had over Buffy in a romantic or sexual sense. Not that he had had any right to make claims on her affections in the first place. He had told her and himself that he wanted her to be free to move on with her life, which by this point, realistically, had to be presumed to include sex in some form. It was a logical inconsistency to let a bird out of a cage and then curse it for flying.

But logic had nothing to do with the situation. The thought of Buffy making love with another man made him physically ill. The fact that she, in her still nearly total inexperience, had chosen someone who'd so quickly left her empty-hearted, pregnant and alone made him very, very sad. It also made him angry on her behalf, both with this stranger and with himself.

Stranger! If it was a stranger. He hoped to God it was a stranger and not—

But he was being ridiculous, Rupert told himself. Everyone knew that vampires were sterile. They were artifacts of death, not participating in the generative forces of creation. Only life could produce life, and there was not a spark of it in them.

But a spark! A spark indeed. That was the rub. A vampire with a soul might be an utterly different matter, he suddenly realized. Horror struck him, waves engulfing waves, like surf on a rocky shore, complex in detail but altogether simple and overwhelming. To cure and yet to kill and to... what in between, exactly? That was taking the concept of the Judas kiss a bit too far! The notion burst like a bubble. A lighter heart might have laughed.

No, it was not possible, and for more reason than just the highly improbable timing. Historical reports indicated that the Restoration Curse had originally been performed by the joint effort of more than two dozen Gypsy Elders, each of whom was as powerful as a mid-level witch. It had all but killed them. There was no way that a single untrained child, a mere dabbler in magic, could have accomplished it.

Rupert had known this, of course, when he had given Willow his tacit approval to attempt it. But Buffy had wanted it so desperately. It had seemed like a low cost way to assure her of his unconditional support, and to free her from any irrational guilt for having left a stone unturned before doing what had to be done. Whereas, his refusal would only have widened the breach between them, made him the scapegoat for her grief and anger over the terrible truth that Angel could not be saved.

He had never dreamed that Willow could come close enough to reaching the powers behind that spell to put herself in any real danger.

As it had turned out, from what the children reported, she had come quite close to those powers indeed. She may even have channeled one of the Elders who had originally cursed Angelus. It was evident that she had a natural affinity for magic that he had never suspected, far more than he himself could ever have claimed. Still, to have successfully performed  _that_  spell! Untrained no less! Even with the aid of one or more Gypsy spirits... Willow Rosenberg would have to have been the most powerful natural witch of the twentieth century. It simply was not possible.

Even if it were, that would hardly have lent enormous support to the hypothesis that Angel could have gotten Buffy pregnant that night. God, that night of all nights! Even the theoretical supposition that she might have— But no. There was no danger that that could be the case. If, against all odds, she had managed to have her first love, her  _true_  love, restored to her, surely her first act would not have been to destroy him again.

No, Rupert told himself, he was being foolish. There was a far simpler expiation for the impregnation of a lonely, emotionally devastated seventeen-year-old girl. She had merely encountered another of the rich Earth's inexhaustible supply of selfish, unscrupulous men.


	3. Aphelion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The thing that drains the life out of them is despair." 
> 
> BtVS 3.1 "Anne"

Once again, for the millionth time in not nearly as many days, Anne Winters sat on the edge of her bed straining to summon the requisite energy to get dressed, eat something, and go to work. Technically it was a Holiday. But not one that she was allowed to sleep through. Certainly not one she felt like celebrating. It didn't help that after going months without a period, she was making up for it by bleeding for more than two weeks straight, a slow but steady spotting.

Anne was beginning to truly hate her life, which, in a way, she guessed, was an improvement over not giving a damn about anything one way or the other. Except that in another way, it wasn't. Like in the way that she actively dreaded getting out of bed each morning. And in the way that she had to count to a hundred and forty something in her head to keep from punching certain gripey and/or gropey customers in the throat hard enough to make their heads pop off. Like in the way that even thinking about how tense and frustrated she really was, how very much she could have used a good sparring partner just to work a little of that tension out always made her think of Giles. Like in the way that when she thought of him she didn't know if she wanted to die in his arms, beg his forgiveness, or beat him unconscious. Like in the way that thinking of Giles always made her think immediately, and guiltily of Angel.

Yes, there was certainly something to be said for not giving a damn, if you really just sat and thought about it.

~~~~~

Oz sat on the wall of Restfield Cemetery watching the sunset in silence. Well, in what passed for silence when you were with Xander, which meant that his frequent bursts of comment were punctuated by appreciable pauses rather than more comments.

“She's late,” Xander declared for perhaps the fourth time, less annoyed this time, more anxious.

“Sabbath,” Oz reminded him.

“I thought that was last night,” Xander complained.

“It was,” Oz said. “Until the sun sets, it still is.”

“Since when is Willow all religiony, anyway?” Xander groused, getting annoyed again.

“Since her father was killed by bloodsucking demons,” Oz reminded him. “Or her mother is anyway.”

“Yeah,” Xander conceded glumly. “Wil told me they finally found his car when the river went down a little. It looked like he was pulled right through the windshield. It was horrible.” They watched the orange redness fade a little further into purple redness.

“Horrible,” Oz agreed, giving away no secrets about what had happened next. Willow didn't want it known. Giles didn't need it known. Xander didn't need to know.

“What's horrible?” Willow asked, coming around the end of the wall.

“Vampires,” the boys said in unison.

“So,” Xander lunged to change the subjected, “is this sunset sat enough for you to be out here?”

“Oh, that?” Willow dismissed several thousand years of tradition with the wave of a hand. “Mom's in Cleveland for a medical conference all week. I was...” she hesitated, somewhere between guilty and worried, Oz thought, “reading up on something... for fun.” Xander seemed not to notice her hesitation. Then again, Oz  _seemed_  not to notice it too. He was actually a pretty good seemer if he didn't say so himself.

“So,” Xander rescued them from silence as he could always be depended upon to do, “Who's on the roster for tonight?” He nodded towards the folded obituary pages Oz held under his arm.

“Nona Anderson,” Oz recited, without unfolding the paper. “Age 46. Killed Tuesday, June 30th. If she doesn't rise tonight, she's probably just dead.”

“Also-rans?” Willow asked worriedly.

"David Levinson,” Oz reminded them. No one had to ask his details. The fifteen-year-old, almost-but-not-quite-a-freshman brother of their classmate Jonathan had 'suffered neck rupture' late Friday night. He was still at the funeral home, waiting to be buried in the morning. There was little chance of him rising so soon. Besides, every funeral home in town had put in cameras and motion detectors.

“Anyone else?” Willow asked.

“Only the two-dozen we've missed in the last month,” Oz reminded her.

“And all the long-term residents of the Hellmouth,” Xander put in glumly.

“Plus the out-of-towners,” Willow agreed with a sigh, feeling defeated.

“Should we split up?” Xander asked, “Try to cover both?”

“So they can kill us all?” Willow asked rhetorically.

“Okay, good point,” Xander conceded. “By the way,” he added, “this Nona Anderson? Kinda short lady, dirty blond?”

“I don't know,” Willow began earnestly, “Oz, did the paper say—” her gaze followed that of the two boys, landing on the moonlit form of a solid, matronly woman trudging steadfastly through the field of headstones towards the gate, which was three feet from where they sat. Her face looked perfectly human, though a bit sour, as if she were in a permanent state of feeling put out. Her face, hair, and once-might-have-been-white linen pants-suit were streaked with dirt. Except in the places where they were caked with it. She was five feet away now, two feet from walking out the gate.

“How do we know if that's her?” Willow whispered.

“Nona Anderson?” Oz asked matter-of-factly hopping down from the wall and approaching her. Stunned, his two companions followed.

“Who wants to know?” the sour old lady demanded. Oz took another three steps forward and gave a slight nod. The three teens fanned out across the gate area, drawing stakes and crosses.

Hissing with rage and fear, the demon (as she now clearly showed herself to be) leapt for Oz's throat. She ignored the cross he held before him until she had run headlong into it, then yelped and leapt backwards, like a scalded dog. Too late she realized, from the fact of having a stake in her back, that Willow and Xander had gotten behind her. Willow had used the force of Nona's own flying retreat to impale her. Unfortunately, she had missed the heart, though probably only by an inch or two. It was enough. The wounded vampire grabbed Willow and Xander by their shoulders, banged their heads together and shoved both of them bodily into Oz.

Oz was the first to regain his feet, but by that time the monster had sprinted the length of the graveyard and was preparing to vault the wall on the opposite side. Suddenly, he was struck by inspiration. Focusing in on the vampire's back, he became very still for a moment then carefully aimed and threw with all of his might. The stake fell from the sky and bounced harmlessly off a headstone less than half way to its target.

“Wow,” Xander said, getting to his feet and brushing the dirt off his clothes. “That would have been so cool if it had worked.”

“It  _could_ have worked,” Willow insisted encouragingly. “Next time maybe it will.” Then, of the slayage more generally, she added, “We... just need to get more of a rhythm down, that's all.”

“Or we could just say we let that one get away,” Xander offered, “You know, because of the Holiday.”

Willow tilted her head at him disapprovingly, but Oz nodded thoughtfully. “I like it,” he said.

“Freedom for vampires?” said Willow skeptically, “I think that might be taking the whole 'Democratic Experiment' a little too far.”

Xander shrugged. “That's my story and I'm sticking to it.”

“Well,” Willow suggested, “It's still early. Maybe we should try and track her.”

“By that special vampire smell?” Oz asked.

“Well... okay, no,” Willow conceded. “What should we do then?”

“I know what!” said Xander, brightening, “We should go find our local British guy and remind him our country can beat up his country.”

“Xander!” Willow scolded.

“What?” he said, “It's a Holiday.”

“'Tis the season to be smug,” Oz sort-of-mock agreed, amused.

“Well we couldn't even if we wanted to,” Willow observed diplomatically.

“I _do_  want to,” Xander reminded her, anti-diplomatically.

“Well you can't,” Willow told him firmly, “Giles is out of town. He went to see that seer in Elmwood...” Willow got quiet and dropped her gaze, “about Buffy.”

“So, still no luck in the search department,” Xander remotely commiserated, all thought of teasing the poor old guy forgotten.

“Not quite yet,” Willow admitted. “But he spoke to someone the other day... I don't know, a wizard or something I guess, who told him she's still on the West Coast somewhere. He just... needs a little more time to narrow it down.”

“Well he'd better hurry up,” Xander observed crossly, “because in case no one has noticed, the forces of darkness are pretty much kicking our ass.”

~~~~~

Rupert Giles waited in a small, dim crowded room. He'd been there almost an hour. Many of those present appeared to have been waiting for days. However, they didn't look like the sort of people who were likely to be as well connected in the Occult world as he was, one way and another. Not that you could always tell by looking.

“WATCHER!” shouted a hard, vast voice from beyond the inner door as it opened to expel a weeping, trembling supplicant, “COME TO ME!” He stepped resolutely forward through a gauntlet of daggered looks and entered the sacred chamber. The door slammed dramatically shut behind him and there was a dull rumbling as of thunder, more felt than heard, through the floor boards and probably throughout the whole house.

“Rupert,” said an amiable, young looking man seated behind a quite ordinary oak desk. “Please, have a seat. It's been forever. How've you been?”

Giles laughed dryly, taking his seat. “Do you honestly have to ask, Harold?”

“No,” the seer admitted, “but it seemed polite.”

“Thank you for working me in on such short notice,” Giles said, returning his host's politeness.

“Well,” said Harold confidentially, “I actually could have seen you a week ago, but I though tonight would be better, energy wise, I mean.”

Giles was surprised. “Aphelion?” he asked, brow knitted, “Is there really any truth—?”

Harold laughed. “Of course not!” he declared dismissively enough to make Giles feel sheepish for wondering. “But it's one of my most booked days of the year. The energy from the waiting room... so much hope, so much faith, so much... longing. It really helps boost my power flow.”

“Then I'm sure you must know by now why I have come here,” Giles replied, sounding grim even though he'd been trying to join in the amusement. Worry seeped from his pores. He couldn't help it. He'd been soaking in it for weeks.

“To find the girl, the Slayer, Buffy Summers,” Harold replied, his own voice losing all trace of levity as they got down to the business at hand.

“Yes,” Giles admitted.

“You're in love with her,” Harold stated flatly.

“Well... there hardly seems to be any point in denying it,” Giles agreed, feeling scrutinized and slightly ashamed, though he didn't believe the seer was actually passing any kind of moral judgment upon him. He was perfectly capable of doing that himself; however, and he felt his own censure very keenly under Harold's appraising eyes. “But I suppose you realize,” he added gravely, needlessly, “it is rather more urgent a matter than simply...”

“Yes,” Harold assured him, relieving him of the need to finish his sentence, “I know all of your reasons. And,” he added before Giles could ask, “I have read in you the information that you received from the demon. It was prudent of you to consult him first. My search will be more focused because of it. You have brought a piece of her?” Though Harold's tone was once again politely interrogative, it was clear that he knew the answer.

Giles pulled the brush Willow had given him from his leather book satchel and placed it in Harold's hand. Harold dropped the brush as if he had been scalded. “SEPARATE THEM!” he boomed angrily, appearing for a fraction of a second to be a much older and larger being, almost but not quite entirely what you'd normally think of as human. Startled, Giles retrieved the brush from the desk and pulled a few golden strands from amongst the more numerous red ones. He found a few with follicles attached and handed them to Harold, who received them with a shutter, then sat for a long while staring at nothing.

When at last he spoke, it was in his deep, sonorous voice, but his tone was gentle. “She is due North of you. Her heart looks Southwards with longing and regret. She feels very far away, further than it is physically possible for her to be. Her emotions are strong. They distort the sense of distance. She is disconnected from her surroundings. The place is urban, crowded; but she has no one. Something about the city makes me think of Los Angeles, but I'm far from certain. It could be any large Western city.”

Harold sighed, sagged a little, then spoke in his youthful, ordinary voice. “I'm not getting anything else location related,” he said, “Sorry. L.A. is probably your best bet. I know you were hoping for more, but she's so lost. It's hard to find someone who can't find herself.”

“Of course,” said Giles softly, defeatedly, “I understand.”

Harold gave him a sad, commiserating smile. “No,” he corrected what had not been said, “Not all of this is entirely your fault.”

“But I should never—” Giles started to argue.

Harold nodded. “...this all the world knows, yet none knows well...”

“In deed,” Giles agreed stiffly, managing a weak smile that he didn't feel at all. He started to rise but hesitated. He knew he ought to leave well enough alone, but still, he wondered....

“I don't sense any strong emotion from her related to pregnancy except for loss, grief, death,” Harold told him. “No hope. No fear. No anticipation in any sense. I don't think she knows she's still pregnant.”

A fist squeezed Giles's heart. “Still?” he gasped.

“Or again,” Harold half conceded. “Truthfully, it's hard to read. As I said, she's not even consciously aware of it. I'm mostly getting it from you. But, certain vibrations do seem to confirm that it is true, and no, I can't tell you who. All her thoughts, all her  _feelings_  of desire, regret, betrayal, love and loss of love are focused upon you and the vampire Angelus.”

Suddenly, Harold stopped, with a look of shock and horror that quickly melted into pity. Giles looked away, humiliated, angry, ashamed. Harold knew better than to say anything to call still more attention to the fact that he had just learned. “She might be able to help you,” he said instead, nodding in the direction of the hairbrush lying on his desk. Then, realizing how very puzzled the young Watcher was, he added, “Willow Rosenberg. She is untrained but already very, very powerful. If you teach her to perform a simple location spell, she should soon be able to pinpoint the exact location of a single individual within a city the size of Los Angeles... even one who is so... unsure if she wants to be found.”

“So Willow really is a Natural Witch?” Giles asked.

Harold frowned and made a noncommittal noise, but then he said, “Yes, she is. And yes, she did restore the vampire's soul. Buffy knew this when she killed him. She loved him at that very moment, with all her heart.”

“Good lord!” Giles gasped. He was quiet a moment before he whispered, “No wonder she's lost.”

Harold sighed heavily, his image almost seemed to slip again for an instant, though not so long and instant that Giles could see the form beneath peeking through. “I'm afraid I don't wonder at much anymore,” he said. It was Giles's turn to sympathize, which he did, silently, knowing that no overt expression was needed. He turned to go, not wanting to burden Harold with his insoluble personal worries about the risks of involving Willow in this versus the desperate need to try anything that might work.

“Yes, but she's  _not_  a child,” Harold argued, “Or at any rate, it's about time she wasn't. I'm just trying to help you,” he added, only slightly apologetically, in response to Giles's well hidden annoyance. “You've paid me enough, after all. And no, she doesn't blame you... much.”

An automatic, 'for what' stuck in Giles's throat as memory forced it's way to the surface: _“Quick sweep in deed,”Giles mumbled derisively as he pulled himself off the ground and brushed the dust of his (only just) vanquished foe from his tweed coat. However badly he felt about the situations he always seemed to be getting Buffy into (in and out of the line of duty) he had to remember to quit fooling himself that he was capable of doing her job, even for one night._

_Thank God this vampire had been such a novice, hurtling himself at the first possible victim without even thinking to check if he had a stake in his hand. He looked as though he'd been turned very recently, and at a fairly advanced age, perhaps mid-fifties. That struck Giles as odd. Most vampires favored the eighteen to thirty set. Unless of course they had some particular purpose in mind that only a given individual could serve. The hairs on the back of Giles neck stood up. In the eye of his memory, the nascent monster seemed vaguely familiar._

_Heart pounding, Giles picked up the tan sport coat that the vampire had shed before attacking his 'prey.' He felt inside and was more relieved than surprised to find the dead man's wallet. This being California, it was just barely possible that a mature man might be buried in a tan sport coat, but if so, it would not have remained so clean. Giles opened the wallet and examined the photograph. “Good Lord!” he gasped in horror, realizing why the vampire's face had seemed familiar. Under a photo that as nearly resembled the slain vampire as any human was likely to, was printed the name Ira Rosenberg._

“ _You know,” said the voice of another too familiar enemy, “people always say that, but if this is the world he created, he must be one sick bastard.” Giles spun on his heels to find Angel less than thirty feet away, advancing through the cemetery at a leisurely pace. The Citron was parked only ten feet away. If he ran for it now, he could probably make it. But hatred is sometimes stronger than fear and Giles's blood was boiling with fresh provocation._

“ _Is this your handy work?” He demanded, dropping Rosenberg's coat and wallet to draw a cross and stake from beneath his own coat._

“ _I'd say it was more yours, Rupert,” Angel replied conversationally, stopping five yards away, but by no means backing up. With obscenely palpable amusement he added, “He was still more or less a living, sentient being when I got through with him.”_

“ _We both know better than that!” Giles retorted bitterly._

“ _Aye, well,” Angel answered, “I'm sure the girls will see it that way, even deep, deep down. Notoriously rational are teenage girls.”_

“They might surprise you,” Harold said, his voice pulling Giles back to the present. It was exactly what  _he'd_  said to Angel that night, in fact. And evidently he'd been right. As Harold had said, Willow didn't blame him. Much.


	4. Dog Days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You think you know, who you are, what's to come. You haven't even begun." 
> 
> BtVS 4.22 "Restless"

**_Giles slammed Buffy mercilessly against the coffee table. Glass shattered and she fell, hard but not far. The unforgiving tile floor pounded the shards of wood and glass into her naked back. His hands were around her throat now, squeezing the life from her._ **

******_He was stronger than any vampire she had ever faced. The weight of his body, now also suddenly naked, pressed down on top of her. His penis, bulging and pressed tight against her exposed belly, was hot to the touch. Willow sat on the sofa, eating her apple, looking on with a mixture of cheerful indifference and casual interest, as if she were watching a movie. As Giles continued to strangle her to death, Buffy felt rough strong hands that were somehow also his forcing her thighs apart._ **

Anne's eyes flew open in the semi-darkness. Her heart hammered in her chest. The shadows on her ceiling, so familiar at every hour of the day and night, told her that she had slept only three hours. That was enough for one night, she told herself. She was not about to risk having any more dreams today. She rolled over and groaned miserably, disgusted and disheartened by the prospect of spending yet another morning lying awake in bed, trying to summon the will to force herself to do anything marginally worthwhile.

In a fit of sudden decisive action, Anne leapt to her feet. Immediately, she regretted it. Feeling dizzy and nauseous, she held on to the bed while it swayed along with the rest of the universe. By sheer force of will, she both managed not to vomit and resisted the urge to lie back down. She should know better by now than to stand up that fast.

The baby grave dream often left her with a sort of phantom morning sickness, so she assumed that was the one she had had, though she didn't clearly remember anything other than the sensation of being chocked by two strong hands. She just needed something to eat, Anne decided. She just had to remember that it was all in her head. Once again, as she dressed for another early morning raid on the local Doughnut King, Anne Winters drilled herself on the one important fact about her life that she was absolutely sure of. 'Whatever else is wrong, at least I know I'm not pregnant.'

It was Buffy who had gotten pregnant, not Anne. Buffy had lost her baby. And Buffy was dead. She had come to the mouth of hell, as was her destiny and died there the way any good Slayer would have, saving the world in the process. Her only mistake had been hanging around afterward. The very existence of Kendra should have given her the clue that Buffy wasn't needed anymore. By anyone.

The new Slayer, the _real_  Slayer would come to the Hellmouth, or wherever else, when she was really needed, just as Kendra had. And she would surly fare a lot better without some has-been, fuck-up Slayer getting in her way and causing more apocalypses for herself than she could handle. Giles would go on with his work, one way or another. Someday, Buffy would be just another past Slayer to not tell his new Slayer about, a learning experience in what not to do as a Watcher. 

Her mom would miss her and probably so would her dad, but they would also be relieved not to have to worry any more about the late night phone calls telling them she was in the hospital or in jail. Willow and Xander would certainly be better off without her, safer. Even in Sunnydale, their lives hadn't needed that much saving before she had started getting them mixed up with monsters and stuff. Now, they knew enough to stay away from danger. They would be alright.

As for Anne, she had the Doughnut King, and after that, another breakfast shift at Helen's Kitchen. They weren't great reasons to get up, but they were reasons. Especially her job. Work equals money, which equals rent, food and all the things you need to stay alive, keep off the streets at night, get up in the morning and go back to work. That was what most people called living. If it was good enough for most people, it should be more than good enough for Anne Winters.

~~~~~

Rupert Giles parked his faithful old car on a gloomy side street in one of the poorer quarters of Los Angeles and tried to screw his courage to the sticking place, as the expression went. For the seventh time in half as many weeks, he was following a tip, a sighting, a speculation as to the whereabouts of Buffy Summers. He took a tiny, folded scrap of paper from his breast pocket. Carefully unfolding it for the millionth time, for the billionth time, he read: _Helen's Kitchen. 1900 Freemont St. Waitress. Anne Winters. Matches the description of Buffy Summers._

The potential pseudonym struck him as terribly like her, terribly honest, terribly innocent. Terribly sad. Anne was Buffy's middle name. And she had so lost herself that she felt she was the child of summer no more. She belonged to the winter, now. The emptiness that follows the expense of passion, when your joys and sorrows have frozen in your heart and the idea of life as an ongoing enterprise becomes distant, theoretical, belonging to the past and perhaps, though less certainly, the future. On the cold north wind of the mind, his heavy heart was blown like an old ship, tempest tossed, across the great deep, to England, to London, to the many long winters he had spent in one summer there.

Giles laughed mirthlessly at his little flight of fancy. Of course it made sense to him. It made the sense he desperately needed it to make. Just as all the others had. He warned himself not to get his hopes up more than was actually necessary to get himself out of the car and do what he needed to do. But if he failed again... if again Buffy was nowhere to be found... it was getting to the point at which truly desperate things must be attempted to avoid dire consequences. Things as desperate as encouraging Willow, an innocent, vulnerable young girl who all but worshiped him, to plunge deeply, rapidly into the study and practice of the dark arts.

Willow had seemed, if anything, too excited by the prospect of having him 'teach her to do magic' when he had touched casually on the subject two weeks ago, but then another promising lead had popped up, and another. And he had been as relieved as she was frustrated each time to find that he 'didn't have time to begin her lessons just yet'. Now each failure filled him with regret that he must soon make good on that promise, and most likely not at a pace or to a degree that she could safely and easily handle.

It would be a dreadful thing to do to her, to use his knowledge to steer and manipulate her power for his own ends, just as he had done to Ethan all those years ago in London, when winter had still been summer there. He knew, deep in his soul, that for her to learn magic so soon, so fast and from so selfish and foolish a teacher would lead her to a bad end. He could not let that happen, could not be responsible for that. And yet, he must find Buffy.

~~~~~

Two blocks from Helen's, Anne stopped dead in her tracks without knowing why. Scanning the street ahead, she soon found her reason. Parked by the curb, just past the diner, was a gray Citron. She turned on her heals and beat a hasty retreat to her apartment, though she had to tug very hard on certain parts of herself to drag them along. In the alley beside her building, she stopped and vomited next to the dumpster.

By the time she had dragged every last longing bit of herself up the stairs and summoned the courage to call Pete, it was fifteen minutes past the start of her shift. She could only imagine what Giles must be telling Pete about her right now. That she was a runaway and ought to be sent home to her mother, probably. Certainly not that she was a supernatural warrior, or a murder suspect, or his ex... whatever she had been to him. Whatever was being said, she had to at least call in before she got fired, before she lost her place in the world completely and had to start over. Again.

The phone rang six times before it was picked up by Eddie, the dishwasher. “What?” he asked, not impatient, just raised without any manners of any kind. That was Eddie.

“I'm uh, sick? I guess?” said Anne nervously, “So, I'm not coming in, okay?” Maybe it wasn't Giles. There could be other gray Citrons in the world. There had to be.

“Anne?” Eddie asked, seeming genuinely uncertain.

“Yeah, it's me,” she said, getting just a little bit impatient herself.

“You know there's this like old, weird, British detective guy in here looking for you?”

“For me?” she squeaked, not sure if she was disbelieving or faking disbelief, “Are you sure? What did he say exactly?”

“He said, 'Erm, um, yes, well, excuse me, hello, erm Pete, is it? Begging your pardon, but I was wondering if there is a young lady working here by the name of Anne Winters.”

“Damn it,” Anne cursed quietly. Eddie's British accent left something to be desired, but there was no doubt in her mind that he had just encountered Rupert Giles. “What did Pete say,” she whispered, hoping that it would give Eddie the clue to keep his voice down as well. It didn't.

“I don't know,” Eddie replied loudly and cheerfully, “I came in here to answer the phone.”

“Listen,” Anne whispered, still willing him to lower his voice but not feeling like the hassle of trying to explain the need to him, “I need a big, big favor. Could you please call Pete in here and put him on the phone right now, but whatever you do, don't let Gi—the British guy know what it's about.”

“No prob,” Eddie assured her, then he called out, “Hey, Pete, Anne's on the phone for you! I don't know what it's about!”

Anne cursed a little more loudly this time. “What?” said Eddie. She almost hung up and made a run for it. But she had just bought groceries and paid August's rent. Besides it was Tuesday, three days to payday. She had left the Doughnut King without enough change in her pockets to interest a coke machine. She had even less of a where to go or how to get there now than when she had left Sunnydale two months ago. She'd just have to... think of something.

To her immense relief (and tiny disappointment) it was Pete, not Giles, who took the phone from Eddie. “Anne, where the hell are you?” he demanded. “Your shift started almost half an hour ago! I'm cooking and serving all by myself. And now there's some kind of candy-ass private dick in here looking for you.”

Under any other circumstances, Bu—Anne might have been amused by this description of Giles. But right now she was too focused on the danger of discovery. “Please tell me you haven't told him anything,” she begged.

“I told him your shift started half an hour ago and I don't know where the hell you're at,” he replied crossly. “Where the hell are you at anyway?”

“I'm... at a friend's,” she lied. If she had had a friend's to go to, she would have gone there right at that moment. Her address was on her application in Helen's desk drawer and she did not at all trust Pete to be able to keep it from Giles. He could be... persuasive. “I'm sick,” she added, almost truthfully. “I was just calling in when Eddie told me... what was going on.”

“What is going on?” Pete demanded, “You're not some kind of fugitive, are you?”

“No!” She lied defensively, “of course not. He's just my ex-Wh—whatever, okay?”

“Really?” Pete asked, sounding doubtful, and in a weird way, sort of disappointed in her, “ _That_ guy?”

“Yeah, Pete, listen,” Anne redirected him, “never mind about that. I need him to go away. I need you to help me make him go away. He cannot know that I work there or where I live or he will not go away until he finds me.”

“I already told him you work here,” Pete told her unapologetically.

“Okay, I can work with that,” Anne tried to assure both Pete and herself. “Just—did he have my picture or anything?”

“Not that I saw,” Pete answered.

“Did he ask you how long I've been working there?” Anne asked, planning as she went along.

“No,” Pete answered.

“Okay,” Anne instructed him, “Here's what you do. Tell him I'm like thirty years old or something and I've been working there for ten or twelve years. He'll start wondering if he's got the wrong Anne Winters. He'll probably show you a picture. Just tell him it's not me. Okay?”

Pete grunted noncommittally. “I'm taking a lot on faith here,” he complained.

“Please, Pete,” Anne whined, “I'm seriously and actually begging.”

“Alright,” Pete agreed, grinning, “but you owe me, and I mean  _big_. Big Favors. More than one.”

“Thankyouthankyouthanyou!” Anne enthused, obviously very relieved, “Thank you so much! You won't regret it.”

“You're damn right I won't,” Pete agreed, trotting out the smarmy, suggestive tone he mostly saved for special occasions now that he knew Anne knew he wasn't actually going to make a move and therefore wasn't bothered enough by it for him to have any 'fun' teasing her that way anymore. “And you're working a double shift tomorrow,” he added, a sudden, and much more authentic idea of how she could start paying him back.

“I live to serve,” Anne agreed, “Breakfast, lunch and dinner.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Pete said, “I've gotta go before this turnip of yours starts talking to the customers.” With that, he hung up.

~~~~~

Pete walked back out into the dining room. “Was it her?” the Englishman asked breathlessly, _frantically_ , “Is she coming in?” Pete didn't know what had made him think this guy was a detective. The desperate gleam in his eyes definitely said crazy-stalker-ex.

“No,” Pete said, trying to sound like he regretted giving him bad news even a little bit just to be polite. “She had to take her sick kid to the ER. Your best bet is to try to catcher her on Thursday,” he advised, knowing full well that Thursday was Anne's day off.

The Englishman looked suddenly pale, “Bu—Anne had her baby? Already?”

“What baby?” Pete asked, “Her kid's like six years old.”

The look of alarm on the older man's face gave way to a sort of wry disappointment. “How old is Anne Winters?” he asked.

Pete tried to look annoyed. “Twenty-five? Thirty? How do I know?” he blustered.

The Englishman's look of grave self-pity deepened more than should have been possible given its hang-dog starting point. “Erm, just to be sure...” he said in a sort of apologetically hopeful way, pulling a folded newspaper out of his giant man-purse. It made Pete sick to think that Anne was willing to get it on with  _this_  guy but not with him. And apparently she was knocked up too, or at least Mr. Fussypants sure thought so.

Pete pulled the paper from his hand, not having to feign annoyance anymore. It was a four page rag from some piss-ant town called Sunnydale. It was folded back to isolate for viewing a good sized black and white photo of a slightly younger but instantly recognizable Anne Winters. Just above the fold was the striking headline, “Local Teen Cleared of Murder Charges; Still Missing.” The paper was only three days old, Pete realized. If Anne was as eager to keep in touch with everyone from her old life as she was with this guy, this would probably still be news to her.

Pete peered at the photo, pretending to consider it, “Could be her,” he said finally, “If she was younger and lost a few pounds. And if it wasn't for the nose.” The old bastard gave him an appraising look, then sagged with something that might have been either disappointment or relief as he reached the conclusion that Pete was exactly as stupid and therefore incapable of running a simple con on him as he looked. Pete favored him with an obligingly stupid grin. “Sorry man,” he said. “I hope you find your Anne.” At last, the Englishman left. And although his manner had never been anything but polite, almost friendly, Pete was more than a little relieved to see the back of him.

At first, Pete had had every intention of using his new knowledge that Anne was (for all she knew) a hunted murder suspect to gain the upper hand in the little game of cat and mouse she'd been pretending not to know they'd been playing for weeks. Yet as one day passed and then another and July gave way to August and the long, slow, hot L.A. summer wore on, he never quite seemed to find his moment, or his nerve.

Pete would have liked to have told himself he was being merciful. Anne was, after all, a sweet, lovely girl. She was fragile, vulnerable and obviously already in a lot of pain. She didn't need any more problems than she already had. Especially if she really was having that crazy old prick's baby. Then again, Pete had taken advantage of several young girls sweeter and more vulnerable than Anne over the years, and one or two almost as lovely. 

So, what was it, Pete wondered, that always made him hesitate? He felt... not fear... exactly, but a sort of deep apprehension. No matter how lost and alone and wounded Anne might be, there was something about her that was hard and sharp, the opposite of fragile, not vulnerable at all. Something that gave Pete an instinctive visceral knowledge that he did not want this woman for an enemy.


	5. Full Moon August Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You have to know what to see." 
> 
> BtVS 2.14 "Innocence"

It was late but still bright. It would have been even without the ubiquitous lights that filled the bargain lot at LAX. The sky was clear, the moon full. Giles tossed his sturdy carry-on into the passenger seat of his gray Citron and got behind the wheel. And there he sat. Five minutes, ten, fifteen minutes passed. He stared blankly through the windshield, looking at the moon if he was looking at anything, dreading the drive back to Sunnydale.

Spokane had been a bust, just like San Diego, and Sacramento, and Eugene Oregon. Just like a half a dozen other towns and cities all along the West Coast. Just like a score of Los Angeles neighborhoods. The closest he'd felt to Buffy in a month had been at that greasy spoon he'd convinced himself she was working at under the name Anne Winters. Despite the discouraging answers he'd gotten to his inquiries there, he'd meant to go back and follow up. To see this Anne Winters for himself. To dispel the almost nonexistent possibility that this Pete character had gotten his facts mixed up and the only slightly more plausible hope that he was lying.

But for the past couple weeks Giles had had so many promising leads to check out. Well leads anyway. Not all of them truly promising. If he were being honest with himself, Giles realized, he had been putting it off. He wanted to delay the moment of seeing the real Anne Winters as long as he could, to keep alive his tiny, irrational spark of belief that somehow, despite the discrepancies, 'Anne' was really Buffy. That she was safe and well and standing on her own two feet, no matter what all the wizards and demons of this hell-nigh world had said about her.

Chastising himself for such foolishness, such selfish denial of the grim realities that needed to be faced, Giles put the car in gear and headed for Helen's Kitchen. If he was ever going to find Buffy, if he was ever going to do what he really needed to do to find her, he had to force himself to see the truth. Starting with the true face of Anne Winters. He would see her, and he would know. He would know that Buffy was as lost and alone as she had ever been. He would know that he had no choice. He would know that Willow was truly his only hope. And at last he would be able to do what he needed to do, to take advantage of her power.

~~~~~

“Willow!” Xander's voice was pained. He clung to her, the fingers of both hands digging into her shoulders, making it impossible for her to turn and leave the library as she was trying so hard to do. “Don't do this!” he pleaded, “You don't know what's gonna happen!”

“Xander,” she told him firmly, resolved but far from calm, near panic in fact, “I _have_  to do this. Please don't make it any harder.”

“Then I'll go with you,” he bargained desperately, “In case you get into trouble, I can go for help.” He wasn't letting go. In fact, he held her tighter, leaving bruises in the soft flesh of her upper arms without even knowing it. Willow didn't care about that.

“No,” she said determinedly. “I need you to stay with Oz. And anyway...” she turned from him as much as she could under the circumstances, avoiding his eyes at all costs, “I have to do this alone or it might not work.”

“It might not work anyway,” Xander reminded her, “It probably won't. You already admitted that. And it  _might_  kill you!” Suddenly, Xander realized he was physically shaking her. He was shaking her and she was near tears. It shook him a little. He released his grip on her arms but held her still with his eyes.

“To contact the spirit world using this spell,” she argued, suddenly desperate for his leave to go, for his blessing or at least his understanding. “Especially given my... somewhat limited skills, the connection has to be very strong, intimate. I mean, my dad always liked you... but I really think this will work better if it's just me and Mom in the house.”

“What would your mom say if she knew what you're planning to do?” Xander countered, his voice cool as a Vulcan's and for ultimately the same reason.

“She'd say don't,” Willow admitted, “And a lot of stuff worse than that, starting with it's Friday freaking night, and I already know all of that, but it's the full moon, and it's gotta be the full moon, which is why I'm waiting until she's asleep, which is better anyway because she'll be closer to the spirit world and her... longing to be near him should give me a boost.”

“You shouldn't do this,” Xander insisted flatly. “This is wrong. Just big fat spanking wrong, and you know it. You've got no business using your mom like that, using your  _dad_ like that, just to try to find someone who doesn't even care enough to want to be found.”

“Xander,” Willow half-scolded, half-begged, sounding wounded, “you know it's... it's not like that! Buffy needs our help, she does. She just doesn't... she just doesn't—And anyway, it's not just about Buffy. I need to talk to him. I need to know that he's okay.”

“Wil,” Xander reminded her somberly, laying his hands on her arms a lot more gently than before, “He's not okay. He's dead. He was killed by demons. Let's say you get through to him, you talk to him, sense him, whatever, and he's... not in a good place. Then what? You're going to say what? 'Gee Dad, sorry about that whole eternal damnation thing, now how about doing me a favor?'”

“Well... no... probably not,” Willow admitted, starting to deflate a little. But in a second or less, she rallied, clearly not letting her self really think through that thought. “Look, I'll figure it out,” she insisted with a kind of stubborn bravado that Xander knew her well enough to know he wasn't going to make a dent in. “I have to  _do_  something, and this is what I'm going to do. I can't not. All I need is someone to stay with Oz. So can I count on you, or am I going to have to ask Amy?”

“You can count on me,” Xander assured her. “You know that. But I'm just calling this like I see it. You're making a mistake. And you know Giles would say the same thing, otherwise you'd be waiting for him to get back so he could help you.”

“Yeah?” Willow said shortly, losing patience with his being right, “Well, in case you haven't noticed, Rupert Giles is not exactly the world's highest authority on good judgment. Especially when it comes to Buffy!”

~~~~~

Giles parked directly across from the diner on the otherwise empty street. It was still a good fifteen minutes before the posted closing time of 10:00pm. But already, two women in red and white checked uniforms could be seen through the brightly lit front windows, wiping down tables and stacking chairs on top, preparing to mop the floor. One of them was a blonde about Buffy's height and not quite twice her weight. But she was sixty if she was a day. The other was tall, thin and thirtyish, with dark brown hair. Neither of them could possibly be mistaken for Buffy by anyone with eyes, but then, he reasoned, probably neither of them was Anne Winters.

There was only one thing he reasonably could do. Giles turned the motor off and walked inside, quickly, before the door could be locked. It was a spot of good luck, he told himself, that he had two new employees to talk to and not Pete again. If Pete had told the truth, then Anne Winters could not be Buffy Summers. But if the manager had deliberately lied to him, perhaps someone else would contradict him. Giles sat self-consciously at the counter and signaled the older woman, whose name tag confirmed that she was Helen herself. The younger woman, “Karen”, put down her hopeful mop and glared at him hostilely. “Excuse me, Madam,” he addressed himself to the owner, ignoring the other woman, “I would like a cup of coffee please, if you would be so kind.”

Helen barked a laugh, at his accent, Giles supposed, and poured him a cup from the already unplugged coffee pot. He took a sip, considering his approach. Her eyes smiled with grim satisfaction at his uncomplaining acceptance of what she had offered, clearly below the standard she would have accepted for herself. Still, the coffee was coffee. It was indeed very bitter, but not yet entirely cold. Helen folded her arms and waited for him to be finished. He got the very clear signal that ordering a meal would not ingratiate him to Helen in any way. In fact, quite the opposite.

His window of opportunity for calling upon even the marginal goodwill of industrial hospitality was closing rapidly. Finally, seeing no better way forward, he asked, “Isn't Anne supposed to be working tonight?”

Helen gave him an appraising look. “How do you know Anne?” she asked.

Giles hesitated. Depending on whether and what Pete had told his employer, she might already know that he was more than casually inquiring, so it wouldn't do him any good to state otherwise too definitely. Still, it was no good to say something so innocuous that it would yield no information at all, especially if his interview were likely to be shortened by preexisting suspicion. “Well, erm... her... my... our children go—er went to school together... last year,” he finally ventured.

Helen stood a little taller as Karen moved a little closer so that they were both facing him, arms crossed, faces set, eyes narrowed. “Mister, you've got—” Karen started, hostile as ever, but Helen waiver her to silence.

“What grade?” Helen asked. Giles's heart was pounding. The way they had both instantly reacted, he was all but certain that Anne Winters had no school-aged children, that in fact she had instructed Pete over the phone to lie on her behalf. In the face of that realization he was having to fight a rising, unjustified certainty that Buffy was at last within his reach if not his grasp. He needed to find a way to justify or dispel that belief, and fast.

Giles allowed himself to seem puzzled by their unfriendliness as a means of explaining his distress. “One of mine is finishing the first grade,” he bluffed confidently, “and the other is starting.” That at least should be a good test of the contrary hypothesis that Pete had told the truth. The two women did not relax or become uncertain as the said hypothesis would have predicted. They reacted instead exactly as if they knew his information to be false and suspected but did not know that he was up to no good. Karen glared at him and silently begged her boss for permission to speak, which she didn't get.

“Well,” Helen said stiffly, warningly, “I'll be sure to let Anne know you came by. Two-thirty-five.”

“What?” Giles asked, startled.

“$2.35,” Helen repeated, “For the coffee.”

“Oh... erm, yes,” Giles agreed distractedly, handing her a five dollar bill.”

“Nice car,” Karen added, not quite casually, unable to hold her tongue as she watched him leave, “Nice plates.” His plates of course, were standard California issue, just another unique number.

~~~~~

The sky was dark and swirling with terrible thunderheads. Green lightning rent the night. Strictly speaking, this 'sky' shouldn't have even existed since it was, technically speaking, inside Willow Rosenberg's bedroom. After hours of chanting, supplication, and burning of various substances in the little metal trashcan that would not be missed from her dad's home office, _something_  was clearly happening, but Willow had no idea what. It certainly didn't seem like she'd 'made contact' with anyone. She felt no less unanswered, no less alone.

“I call upon the spirit of Ira Rosenberg!” she repeated, more forcefully than ever. “Come forth! Come forth, and give comfort to your loved ones in their time of need!” Nothing. Willow could feel the energy in the room beginning to fizzle. The clouds started to clear. “Dad!” she screamed, panicked, “Dad! Dad! Please, I need you! Dad, I need you, now! I can't do this! I can't do this alone!” Tears streamed down her face. Something in the air stirred. “Come back! Come back!” she wailed, “Daddy, Please come back! Please, just talk to me!!!!”

The stirring of that interior sky became suddenly intense. It enveloped Willow like an invisible tornado. A strong sheer pulled her body and soul in different directions as the storm raged around and inside her. Willow screamed again, in pain and terror, wanting nothing more than for this to be over. Suddenly, with a loud pop and an electric sizzle, it was. Willow felt at one with her body again. She was lying face down on her bedroom floor, drenched in sweat. The night beyond her windows crackled and popped for a few minutes more. All the lights in her room were out. All the lights in her world were out. She curled into a ball and wept.

~~~~~

All the way back to Sunnydale, the whole three hour drive, Giles turned what he now knew, or thought he knew, over and over in his mind. Anne Winters had to be Buffy Summers. She had seen his car, that was why she had called in. She had talked to the boy, the dishwasher, and asked specifically for her manager, to inform him that something was wrong, something that should not be repeated. Then and only then had Pete began to lie. It was the only thing that made sense. Except that it was all so appallingly thin, so dependent on interpreting gestures and looks and things that had not been said. Still, he knew that Anne was Buffy. She had to be.

Still, that left him in something of a quandary as to what to tell Joyce. He didn't dare tell her on such scarce evidence that her daughter had at last been found. And yet, he must tell her something. He was absolutely certain she was up, had been up all night, waiting to hear from him. She had told him she would be. He had stretched matters as far as he could, waiting to see her in person rather than calling her from Los Angeles. He glanced at the dashboard clock, confirming that it was now well after 1:00 a.m. She would already have had time to be certain that something had gone even more terribly wrong than usual and to be gravely worried.

Sighing, Giles turned off of his own way home and headed for Revello Drive. As he drove the familiar streets of Sunnydale, he sensed a different strangeness than usual, but because of the brightness of the moon, it took him a few minutes to realize what it was. Every streetlight and porch light was out, every window dark. When he looked closely at a few more windows, he caught just a flicker here and a glimmer there of candle light. The power seemed to be out all over town. Which could, he supposed, have some harmless cause, but it  _was_  Sunnydale, after all. As he pulled to a stop in front of Buffy's home, Giles made sure to lay hands on the stake and cross concealed beneath his coat before venturing from the car.

All the way up the front walk, even as his eyes automatically scanned the night for sinister movement, his mind ran on the problem of what to tell Joyce. Buffy had told her, of course, that she was the Slayer, and as nearly as she could, what that meant. Joyce had accepted that, after a fashion. And yet, he was still quite certain she had no idea of the power, of the  _enormity_ , of the forces actually in play, no concept of her daughter's strength or importance. He still more than half expected that if he told Joyce, straight out, exactly what he knew about where Buffy might be and how he knew it, she would call upon the police to bring home her 'runaway teen' and believe them to be capable of doing it.

What would happen, if the police came knocking on Buffy's door at Joyce's behest? Would she run again. What would she do if he knocked on her door? If Joyce did? Would she even talk to them? Either of them? Would she give them the chance to tell her how much she was needed, how much she was missed, not only personally but in a very immediate and practical sense? And if she could be made to listen? Would she care? Would she come home? And if so, in what state would she come home? On what terms would she come home? And to whom? And just by the way, just in case she knew or didn't know, should he be preparing Joyce for (or trying to conceal) the fact that Buffy probably was (or certainly might be) very, very or fairly newly pregnant?

Joyce opened the door before he was near to ready, before he rang the bell, before he had even set foot on the first step of her front porch. The moon easily out shown the candlelight behind her. Her face was a mask of tragic, anxious, skittering, sneaking hope. His heart balled into a fist aching to relieve her pain and thereby, perhaps, some small measure of his guilt. Suddenly, the clear night sky was split by a bolt of green lightning, which to Giles's horror, struck a large tree near the front of Buffy's house. Giles jumped back, narrowly avoiding being crushed. As Joyce's cry of alarm was lost in the lagging thunder and the violent rustle of oncoming foliage, Giles felt a moment of startled relief to still be standing, alive and well, not one foot from the massive wooden hulk that was only just coming to rest before the front steps. Then a limb flapped loosely out from the still rolling trunk, like the flailing arm of a drowning man and struck him a powerful blow to the temple. And like a jostled candle, his consciousness flickered out.

~~~~~

“I'm telling you Kate,” said Anselm Barker eagerly, “I smell blood.”

“You always smell blood, Clive,” Kate countered crossly. She still insisted on calling him that. He hardly minded anymore. She hugged herself against the eery chill that seemed to follow in the wake of the odd electrical 'storm'. “Let's just get out of this neighborhood,” she repeated. “It's bad luck. We shouldn't even be out on a night like this. Just look at that moon!”

This Anselm did mind, the superstition. He told her so, again, not for the first time. Kate believed in things like Slayers and Werewolves and little green men from Mars, worried about them the way you would worry about something real like a nuclear war, or sunrise. Too much Clive Barker, Anselm thought. He didn't believe in that kind of supernatural nonsense. He believed in things you could see and touch. And in things you could smell.

Anselm followed his nose, ignoring Kate's whining, knowing she would follow him, as she always did. The smell was getting stronger. Now Kate could smell it too. The two vampires exchanged a hungry look. Kate whined and growled low in her throat like a hopeful dog. They left the sidewalk behind, loping over lawns and gardens, towards that compelling, maddening, delicious, intoxicating smell. Their eyes glowed yellow in the moonlight, their faces gone demonic with desire.

They rounded the house at a gallop. Sprawled on the lawn before them lay a man and a tree, both so newly felled that only the green lighting could have been responsible, a fact which Kate managed to witter uneasily about despite the feast before them. “Well, then,” Anselm teased, “It must be a miracle, manna from heaven. Hell, maybe 'God' is on our side.”

Kate turned seven shades at that and Anselm felt wearily certain that she was about to scold him when they were both distracted by the sound of someone in motion, rounding the tree at a good clip. They both looked up in time to see tall, well quaffed blonde (still fully and conservatively dressed at this ungodly hour) stop dead still in the act of rushing to what Anselm could only assume was her husband's side. “Oh, oh no,” the woman gasped, shaking her head just a little, clutching at disbelief. Kate barely spared her a glance before falling upon the downed man, evidently judging that she was not a threat or that 'Clive' could handle her.

The arrangement suited Anselm fine. She would be his first warm meal in a week and he had a pent up appetite for struggle as well as for blood. Trim and fit though she was, and sharp by the look in her eyes, he had no doubt that he could overcome her. As he closed on her, keeping an eye on her hands, mindful of the way her intelligent eyes darted about in search of a weapon or a plan of action, he appraised her. She might have been forty or not but she definitely wasn't much more, and she would do for beautiful in a pinch, not that beautiful mattered much. She was healthy, fiery. More than capable, he judged, in less fraught circumstances, of arousing other things than bloodlust.

He had found a new partner, Anselm decided. Almost certainly a better companion than the whining, irrational bitch who had happened to rise from the grave beside him. And if she wasn't, or if he got tired of her anyway, he could just trade up again. He growled low, fairly panting with hunger both for her blood and for the act of killing, but also for the unspeakable intimacy of siring his own spawn. He wanted her in that way, as deeply, as passionately, as every living thing wants sex and every human wants affection.

Just as she finally seemed to get the clue to turn and flee, that there was no battle plan that had any prayer of success, Anselm leapt across the scant few feet that still separated them. He pinned her beneath him like a reluctant lover, his hands holding her arms at her sides as the bulk of his body did the major work of restraining her, weighing her down. He didn't bite yet, nuzzling her neck, rubbing his face in her hair, breathing in the fresh, terrified sweat that poured from her clean-scrubbed skin.

Anselm groaned with passion, closing his eyes, savoring the intensity of  _her_ desire, of life crying out to live. He must have loosened his grip on her arms without thinking, because he felt her hands moving on his body. Despite the frankly miserable noises she was making, the  _way_ her handswere moving raised everything but alarm, fraught circumstances notwithstanding. If this was her idea of bargaining, Anselm liked what she was selling. Besides, considering what a prayer in hell force didn't have against him, it almost proved that she was smart, and he like that. He liked it a lot.

The woman gave his testicles a gentle squeeze through his pants and Anselm kissed her hard on the mouth. Painfully hard, he knew, but the woman didn't complain. “Stop her,” she gasped, when he raised his mouth from hers. “Please. You can come here every night. I'll let you in. You'll never be hungry again.”

“If I believed you...” he murmured against her neck as her hands unbuckled his belt and unzipped his pants. He licked at the pulsing artery in her neck, feeling for the place that he would strike, tasting her hot blood already in his mind. “My dear, if only I believed you!” He wondered too late why one hand strayed to his pocket while the other continued to gently fondle his cock and balls. The knife in his scrotum answered him in short order. He cried out in agony and terror as she continued to plunge the knife forward and up into his guts.

By the time Anselm had mastered himself enough to realize that he wasn't dying after all, that he probably cloud have snapped her neck at the moment she'd struck if he'd just kept his wits about him, the woman had rolled him off of her and gotten to her feet. By the time he had stuffed his bleeding intestines into his jockey shorts and belted his pants over them tight enough that he had some hope of holding them in and not tripping over them, she was kneeling beside the body of her husband, putting pressure on the wound in his neck, affixing something to it with his tie.

Kate was nowhere to be seen. She must have fled at the first sign of danger. “Women!” Anselm snarled. You couldn't trust a one of 'em, dead or alive. This one was feeling of her man's chest now, all concerned, like she was looking for a pulse. She relaxed just enough for Anselm to know she'd found what she was hoping for... the instant before he punched her in the back, knocking her to her stomach on top of the senseless man.

Sure enough, the man groaned and murmured something that sounded like 'birthday' or maybe 'mercy.' Delirious as hell, obviously, but Anselm could give a shit less. “I'm glad the fucker's alive,” he raged, as he landed on the woman's back and wrapped his hands around her throat. “'Cause after I rip your fucking guts out through your cunt and strangle you with your own intestines, I'm going to sire your man-bitch here just so the two of us can have a good laugh about it!”

~~~~~

Joyce tried to keep a single thought in her pounding head, but it kept swimming away from her. Her vision was blurred and running at the edges. The voice that belonged to the hands around her neck was snarling and shouting at her, but she couldn't follow what was being said. She was still drawing in ragged breaths, could still feel the oddly cold night air stinging her lungs, and yet she felt as though she were holding her breath, had held it for far too long already. She felt sick to her stomach and on the verge of passing out. The weight on her back was painful enough, but those damned hands!

Hands! Suddenly Joyce remembered the thought she was supposed to be thinking. She moved her hands and they obeyed her. She pressed the cross in her left hand hard against the vampires wrist and held tight to the stake in her right hand, awaiting an opportunity. The vampire cried out in pain, but did not release her throat right away. She moved the cross against as many parts of his body as she could, positioned as he was behind her, burning both of his hands, wrists and arms and a spot or two on his face and neck until he couldn't stand it any longer. The vampire took first one hand, then the other, from Joyce's throat, trying to use them instead to pry the cross from her fingers.

The sudden rush of oxygen and glucose to Joyce's brain made her feel sharp, giddy, euphoric, up to a challenge. She hid the cross beneath her body, forcing him to roll her over to get at it. Greedily, he reached for it with both hands. She slid sideways, as if trying to escape, aware of the uncomfortable lumpiness of a man beneath her, but unable to process Mr. Giles' presence in any more meaningful way.

When she had shifted just enough to feel she had a prayer in hell, which was as good as this situation was ever going to get, Joyce swung hard from the shoulder with her right arm and brought her stake down onto the vampire's back, which was suddenly, inexplicably, tumbling on top of her as she tumbled backward. There bodies rolled against one another with such force that the wooden weapon was driven deep into the monster's chest cavity, a thing which Joyce now realized the force of her stroke alone would never have accomplished. For one tense moment, Joyce doubted that the heart had been pierced, then the creature exploded in a puff of dust.

“Bloody hell!” Mr. Giles moaned, swaying on his feet as if her were drunk. Then, suddenly, his feet collapsed out from under him. Joyce had to think fast to catch him in her arms so that he didn't hit his head again. It was no wonder, she realized, that he couldn't keep his feet. Besides the blow he had already taken, he had also lost an unknown but not small amount of blood. Joyce cursed. He weighed much more than she could carry. Even if she could coax him to his feet and hold him up, she'd never get him over the tree to the porch or all the way around to the kitchen door. She was going to have to leave the poor man lying in the open while she went inside to call 9-1-1. That's it, Joyce told herself. If I make it through tonight alive, I'm joining the cellphone army.

Suddenly, Joyce was half blinded by a pair of headlights as a car drove up onto her lawn and stopped abruptly, much too close to her. Before she could get to her feet, a person (please, God, a person?) jumped from behind the wheel. It was a dark haired, dark eyes, pale skinned woman with full red lips, vaguely ethnic in appearance but only just, Eastern European maybe. Joyce had an idea whom she might be from Buffy's unflattering description, though her sudden appearance seemed to make so little sense. “Willow!?!” the Gypsy woman shouted, “Willow are you here?” And suddenly it made just a little more.


	6. Where Does the Summer Go?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Giles: "Joyce, you mustn't blame yourself for her leaving." 
> 
> Joyce: "I don't. I blame you." 
> 
> BtVS 3.1 "Anne"

Steeling herself, Gale grasped the knob of the library door firmly, ready to slide her key in. It turned in her hand, not locked after all. The Slayer slouching boredly at her side perked up just a little, hoping for trouble. She was quickly disappointed. “Ah, Ms... Calendar, is it?” Gale correctly guessed the identity of the intense, almond eyed woman typing away on the new computerized 'card catalog'. The woman nodded and rose politely to present herself, forcing a look of casual welcome onto a face that scant seconds ago had been almost brooding. “I'm sorry,” Gale excused herself, “I wasn't aware that there'd be anyone here.”

The Kalderash woman favored her with a reasonable facsimile of a smile. “You must be Ms. Marylbone,” she noted as their hands met in the brief, obligatory grasp of stylized ritual truce, a social form harking back into the mists of time immemorial, long stripped of any meaning.

“Yes, looking forward to working with you,” the Watcher intoned, just as meaninglessly. After an awkward fragment of a moment she added, “May I present my niece, Ms. Faith Lehane.” Faith stood with her arms crossed, rolling her eyes. At a stern look from Gale, she uncrossed them and shook hands, sparing no more than a grunt of greeting for the woman that, not one hour ago, her Watcher had been lambasting as 'a Goddamn Gypsy' who 'ought to learn to mind her own bloody business.'

“I thought you might be able to use my help,” Ms. Calendar pressed forward, trying to keep the faltering conversation from sputtering to a stop. “In getting the library ready. I know you have your own class room to take care of, too, so....”

“I sorted out my room over the weekend,” the English teacher informed her stiffly. “And I am actually quite handy with a computer, despite my age. I'll gladly take matters from here. I'm sure you needn't strain yourself after... all you've been through. I should have the place humming right along by the time this... Mr. Giles returns to duty.”

“Oh, then he definitely is coming back this year?” Jenny asked, trying hard not to let her—well, whatever this was she was feeling—show.

“So I'm told,” the Watcher replied, if possible becoming even stiffer than before. In a way, Jenny sympathized. This conversation must be difficult for her, having to pretend to have only recently heard in sketchy detail about someone whom she'd actually know all her life, trying to judge how much information she could reasonably be expected to have, and to remember to be consistent about it.

This might well have been the woman's first real undercover assignment, Jenny supposed, remembering what that had been like in the beginning, how it tied your stomach in knots, to live a lie. Of course, any lie you lived long enough came to have its own truth, its own solidity. It got easier. And then again, it got harder, especially as you came to “know” people who thought they really knew you. It was so tiring to be constantly on guard with everyone all the time.

Jenny had hoped it was a condition they could share, and therefore be somewhat relieved of. But every millisecond of this conversation piled evidence upon evidence for the realization that Ms. Marylbone was never going to let that happen. It might have been because of her association with Rupert, or it might have been more directly related to her history with Buffy, about which she supposed the Council might know a little or a lot. Then again, it might just be the Watchers' equivalent of Boundary Law. They were, after all, a people unto themselves, just as her own people were.

Whatever the reason, it was clear that her help was not wanted in this library. Jenny sighed, made polite excuses, and left. It didn't have to be this way. But this was the way it was.

~~~~

“You're sure this is no trouble?” Giles asked for the fiftieth time at least.

“No, no,” Joyce assured him as convincingly as she could. “No trouble.” But of course he could see that she was troubled. Any idiot could see that, she guessed.

“Because,” he offered, “though I can't yet drive, I could certainly take a taxi if I'm putting you to any—”

“I said, it's fine.” Joyce cut him off shortly. She fought the urge to apologize, and for once she prevailed. “Hurry up,” she said, instead. “I had to park in a loading zone.” Joyce had nothing to be sorry for, she reminded herself as the orderly pushed the button for the elevator. She'd been nothing but nice to this man. Polite. Solicitous. Accommodating. She had sat by his bedside, read aloud to him, later brought him magazines to read, and asked after his progress. Waiting for him to recover.

Well, five days out of an eighteen day coma, he might not be what anyone would call _fully_ recovered, Joyce argued with herself. He was still weak; still, quite literally, getting back on his feet. He was sitting in a wheelchair at the moment in fact. But he was recovered enough, Joyce told herself firmly. She was getting a little better at being firm, with herself at least. Being very angry helped with that a little, though she wished it helped a little more. Nevertheless, ready or not, today was the day. They were going to have a Talk.

Silence reigned for several interminable minutes as Joyce stared straight ahead at the road and Giles winced at every bump but refused to cry out. Joyce switched on the radio, hoping it would get in the way of her thoughts and delay the inevitable conversation just a minute longer. _♫...Wonder this time where she's gone. ♪_ a plaintive voice lamented from beyond the grave, _♫Wonder if she's gone to stay. Ain't no sunshine when she's gone, And the house just ain't no home—♪_ Hurriedly Joyce switched the radio off. Mr. Giles stiffened and avoided eye contact. This next silence lasted only seconds, but they were unbearably long seconds.

“Do you... um do you have any plans for... next weekend?” Joyce asked. Giles gave her an odd look and tried to think of a polite response. Joyce was annoyed both with him and with herself. Alright, so it was a stupid question, she admitted that. He was a man married to his work... so to speak, without family and almost without friends in what was still, to him, a foreign country. One who's customs he paid as little heed as possible, from what Joyce had been able to gather. And he was just getting out of the hospital (where she had been his only adult visitor) following a coma. Of course he didn't have any plans for Labor Day Weekend! But he didn't have to _look_ at her like it was a stupid question.

“Not as such,” he managed at last. Well, it was a start, Joyce tried to tell herself. Maybe they weren't quite 'having a Talk'. Yet. But at least they were talking. Of course, it was the same kind of meaningless talking they had been doing for the last five days.

“You still don't remember anything?” she asked, beating the bush a little (but not a lot) nearer the point.

“Nothing,” he confirmed. “I was getting ready for my flight to Spokane... and then I awoke in... in hospital. I only know the trip was unfruitful because of the notes I'd already made in my diary on the flight back. Thank you, by the way,” he added after a moment, “for fetching it for me. It was very... very kind of you. I... well, there's nothing like being alone and unwell to make one truly feel a stranger in a strange land. I don't know what I'd have done if not...” He let his voice trail off and averted his eyes once more. He was suitably ashamed, realizing, Joyce surmised bitterly, that he was describing Buffy's likely circumstances at that very moment. Except, Buffy wasn't suffering from a blow to the head.

“I read it,” Joyce said simply, as she parked by the curb in front of his condo. “The diary volume that I brought you. All of it.” He turned to face her at last, looking suitably shocked and dismayed. His hand fell to his lap, abandoning its plan of opening the car door. “I couldn't stand not knowing what happened in Spokane.” she explained, as frankly and unapologetically as she could. “And then once I started....” His mouth worked for a moment more, as though he meant to say something in response, then he cast his eyes down at his lap, saying nothing.

“I suspected anyway,” she went on, “from a lot of things. Especially... from what Buffy did to that woman.” Joyce fought to keep the shame out of her voice at that, reminding herself for the millionth time that he was the only one who ought to be ashamed. “But, well—and especially after I'd heard the 'logical explanation' for that—I thought maybe I was being paranoid. Or trying to simplify the situation, to justify the way I felt about you taking Buffy away from me.”

“I didn't...”Giles started to argue. But he could not look Joyce in the eye and make that argument. Not after all the things she had done for him. Particularly knowing the circumstances under which she had done them. “That... wasn't my intent,” he finished haltingly, realizing his glasses were in his hands without having a clue how they had gotten there.

Joyce engaged the parking brake with a little more force than was actually necessary and turned to face him, the kind of head turning that made her hair flutter emphatically. “And what, exactly, was your 'intent',” she demanded. Her tone was harsh but calm, her voice quiet.

“I... don't know,” he admitted, rubbing and polishing. “It's all... was all... I suppose, more to do with feelings than intentions. As terrible a position as that is for a man my age to take. As if I didn't... I have no valid excuses, of course. Naturally, I knew better.”

Joyce shook her head, “Oh, I'm certain of that!” she assured him thinly, tightly, “But that isn't what I meant.” She took a deep breath and plunged in. “Even if you'd never laid a hand of Buffy, even before you had, you took her away from me. You and your 'Council', but especially you. You came here under false pretenses. You lied to me from the minute I met you, 'the concerned teacher'. You made me trust you so that I wouldn't interfere with the whole... relationship you were having with Buffy behind my back!

“I mean,” Joyce was trying to be calm, rational, knowing that she was in the right, but all of her emotion was threatening to come flooding out, “You've been this huge influence on her, shaping her, guiding her. And did you ever once think that that was _my_ job? That that was _my_ sacred duty!?! That God or the Universe or whatever gave Buffy to me, not to you! That maybe there was a reason for that! That I had a right... that _Buffy_ had a right, whether she saw the need or not, for me to know what was going on in her life, to be there to help her!”

“Help her how?” Mr. Giles challenged, cool over hot, finally putting his glasses back on and looking her in the eye, looking surprisingly angry himself, in fact. “By confining her to a mental institution? Again. Have you the slightest idea the damage you've done, the fear, the anguish, the insecurity you've—!”

“Ohhhhhhhhhh, no you don't!” Joyce insisted fiercely, shaking her head in angry disbelief. “You're not going to sit there and tell me—”

“No, I'm not,” he cut across her icily. “This conversation is finished,” he tried to unlock his door. When he found he couldn't, he continued speaking as though he'd merely changed him mind about getting out of the car, not willing to ask Joyce for anything at that precise moment. “I'm prepared to answer for my own misconduct,” he informed her, his voice heavy, quiet and infuriatingly patient, “To be punished to whatever extremity you feel is necessary. But I didn't make Buffy who she is. And I can't change who she is. And neither can you. And neither can she. No matter how far she runs away. She is still the Slayer, and she always will be.”

“No,” Joyce corrected him firmly. “She _was_ the Slayer. That's Faith's job now. When I get my daughter back, I'm not letting you anywhere near her. When I find Buffy, I'm taking her back home to Illinois.”

Giles sighed. She actually thought it was that simple. Her powers of denial were extraordinary. _“_ It won't be up to you,” he explained patiently. “Or to me either. No matter where she goes on her own or where you take her. No matter what becomes of me. _Buffy_ has a sacred duty. A duty that she is shirking, for which there will be hell to pay, one way or another. For her as well as for everyone else. Someone has to bring that fact to her attention, to call her back to task. If I can't do that, if you succeed in keeping her from me, or if she simply refuses to listen, the Council will send someone else. And if they aren't able to bring her back in line, by some other means, fate will. One way or the other.”

~~~~

Buffy sat, last of the pay check Spaghetti Os in one hand, can opener in the other. One, of course, was supposed to open the other. But making them do that seemed like a tiring amount of trouble. Buffy felt disheartened and ashamed for not being able to manage such a simple task, but she couldn't manage it. She had already waited until the very last minute to leave for work. If she sat here another five minutes, she would be five minutes late. Wanting to groan but not bothering, she left the can and the opener lying on the bed and went to work.

Buffy walked like a Zombie through her shift, barely reacting when Pete yelled at 'Anne.' Everyone here still called her Anne, but somehow, over the past few weeks, it had become increasingly clear to her that she was Buffy. Whatever Buffy was. And still, again today, like always, Giles didn't come.

More than three weeks had passed since the panicked moment that she had gleaned—from the wrongheaded, misinformed conversation Karen had tried to have with her about her 'ex' who'd come looking for 'the kids', whom she seemed to assume were in foster care somewhere—that Giles had talked to Helen and gotten more than enough information that didn't match Pete's to know, or at least to suspect, that this must be where she was. If she'd had two dimes to rub together, she would have fled right then. But after a day or two of reflecting while she waited to get paid, she had realized, that was no plan at all, no kind of life. Giles wouldn't give up just because she had rabbited. He'd keep looking until he found her again. Sooner or later, she would have to face him, to tell him that she was her own woman and that he could go 'Watch' some other girl. Sooner seemed better, along the lines of getting it over with.

And so she had waited. Patiently. A week. Two weeks. Three. Now going on a month. And still. He didn't come. Maybe she wasn't the one thing he could never give up on after all, Buffy realized. Maybe he had decided to let her go once he knew she had a job and wasn't living on the street somewhere. Maybe he was relieved to be shed of such a burden. To be able to move on.

Buffy tried to be happy for him, tried to feel the same way. But it hurt. Sometimes she swore she could feel the pain physically, in waves shooting up her lower back. But mostly she just felt tired. The thought of living another sixty years, 720 months, 3131 weeks, 21,915 days.... Well, hopefully she wouldn't live quite that long. Maybe she should take up smoking, Buffy reflected, as she noticed (but failed to care about) the hash browns burning at what was not her station. Or Slaying.

 


	7. Labor Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Wheel never stops turning.... You're up, you're down ... it doesn't change what you are." 
> 
> BtVS 6.15 "As You Were"

“So you're the infamous Mr. Giles,” the girl smirked, her tone an odd mixture of amused, impressed, and ostentatiously lascivious. “Surprised old Boneybutt left me alone with you. She must be slipping.” Faith was leaned back in a position that could have been accurately described as being very slightly seated on the second reading table, were it not for the fact that her feet still rested mostly on the floor, though most of her weight was evidently being born by her hands, which gripped the wooden surface to either side of her.

Mr. Giles suppressed a sigh. “I'm sure,” he muttered without looking up, pretending to be too engrossed in the serious business of reorganizing everything Gale had organized while he was out to have noticed her one way or another. He supposed her positioning was meant to convey the message that she had not the slightest care how she was perceived or whether she was noticed by anyone... whilst incidentally thrusting her hot-pink tube top encased breasts as far out into the collective face of the world as possible.

God, what a tiresome child, trying so desperately to paint herself as the invulnerable street-sophisticate, all in broad brushstrokes and vivid colors. He wished she could be made to go away. All he'd asked Gale to do was to drive him to the library as he was still not medically cleared for that task and wouldn't be for another week. As much as it pained him to ask her for even that much, he hadn't been able to live with the thought of walking into the library on the very day students were due to arrive without having seen what all she'd done to the place and having a chance to undo it. But though that task was every bit as necessary as he had feared, he still found himself wishing he'd taken the opposite course.

“Guess she really, really didn't want to miss that picnic,” Faith was saying, still desperate to 'casually' engage him in conversation.

“He's the Mayor,” Giles pointed out shortly, still without looking up. “It isn't as though she could have politely refused.” The girl shrugged, frowning a little. He didn't suppose there'd be any profit in trying to explain to her the concept of a breach of protocol. And he certainly didn't intend to risk slipping into a discussion of the related topic of breaches of ethics.

“So how come we're here and not there?” she challenged in a tone of thinly feigned innocence, tilting her head and smiling mockingly, moving the toes of one foot 'idly' in a circle as if unaware of the attention she was calling to her toned and tanned legs, bare from thigh to sandal in her tiny denim shorts. The ingénue playing the jade playing the ingénue, bloody priceless. If he hadn't known better, he'd have thought Gale had left her with him as a punishment, an overdose of his own medicine. But it was all too clear that her real purpose had been to avoid whatever deeds of embarrassment Faith would have found it necessary to commit in order to call attention to herself at such a very public gathering.

“Fetch me the box of books sitting on the left side of the desk in my office,” he ordered her brusquely. Faith sniffed, stood to her full height and crossed her arms. Giles looked at her severely over the tops of his glasses.

“Whatever,” Faith declared. With a theatrical shrug and a roll of the eyes, she complied. “I bet you didn't talk to Buffy like this when she was 'sorting your books' for you,” she muttered, 'under her breath' (but quite intelligibly) as she walked toward the tiny inner room. Giles restrained himself from pointing out that she was _not_ Buffy, finding it much less indecorous not to have heard what she'd said.

~~~~

“Good morning! Would you like to try our classic Labor Day picnic special? Fried chicken, corn on the co—”

“Just a coffee, thanks,” the twitchy young man with the thick Irish accent cut Buffy off shortly, relieving her of the burden of acting cheerful.

Buffy didn't stay relieved long. There was something about the slight stranger that unsettled her, something she couldn't quite put her finger on. Until she did. “God!” she spat, exasperated. “Why can't you people—or whatever you are—give me some room. I mean, does every last one of you have a death wish or something?” Buffy couldn't sense most demons in the same uncanny way that she could vampires, but she had killed enough of them, and enough different kinds, to have a pretty good idea what most of them smelled like in the various stages of panic and dread. And this guy was sweating some kind of inhuman eau de anxiety that was _not_ subtle.

And it was getting not-subtler. “Wha—de—who—how did you know?” his terrified stammer ended in a harsh, but no less terrified, whisper. “Who _are_ you?”

Buffy stood with her hand on her hip (well, okay, on her very slight love-handle) appraising him critically. “You _really_ don't know?” she asked, more tired of the unbelievable but true than disbelieving. “Then, what the hell are you doing here?” Even though they were speaking quietly, a few heads turned in their direction. Buffy set the coffee pot on the table and sat down across from him in his booth.

“Name's Doyle,” he more or less apologized, offering his hand.

Buffy crossed her arms. “That's not what I asked,” she reminded him pointedly. “Talk fast. This is a humans only establishment.”

“I'll have you know, I'm very much human!” Doyle insisted indignantly, before adding, quite sheepishly and with what he obviously hoped was a disarming smile, “On my mother's side. Look,” he added, after a moment's reflection, “I'm brand new in town, and I don't rightly know the things 'everybody knows' yet, so if I've intruded on some secret magical realm disguised as a greasy spoon... you know, all apologies, I just... _who_ are you?”

Buffy sighed and rolled her eyes. 'Demon' though he may have been, this guy didn't exactly give off a 'deadly threat to humanity' vibe, just an other than entirely human smell. “I'm Buf— Anne... Winters," she informed him sharply, "Vampire Slayer, retired. But not so retired that I can't still thrash any vampires, demons and forces of darkness that come around bothering me where I live and work, do we understand each other?”

“Oh,” Doyle said, evidently quite surprised, and then, suddenly, terribly relieved. “It's you I was sent here to find, then. 'A lost champion.' Someone to help the helpless. You're the one... my destiny!”

“No,” Buffy said, getting up from the table. “I'm really, really not. I'm not anybody's 'destiny'. Especially not some moon-faced, hero-wanna-be, poster boy for the positive portrayal of Irish demons in American media.” Buffy—no Anne, Anne, damnit!—turned to walk back into the kitchen to wash her hands and carry on with her very normal, perfectly respectable, work. “Don't let the door hit you in the ass,” she told the pitiful demonling, walking away without looking back.

~~~~

“The copy machine in the office is broken,” Jenny announced abruptly upon entering the library, somehow folding both a hostile greeting and a grudging apology into that one tiny bit of exposition. All the while, she was looking askance at Faith where she sat cross-legged on a table polishing her toe nails with an air of superhuman boredom.

Jenny! Giles's heart lurched unsteadily towards her then stopped short, hard enough to get whiplash. “By all means,” he said stiffly, with a perfunctory gesture in the direction of the copier in his inner office. He quickly found some mindless sorting task for an excuse to sit down. He was doing a fairly good job of concealing his emotions, he thought, though he hadn't quite sorted out what all of them were. He'd been told, of course, that she'd been released from hospital shortly before he'd arrived there himself. But seeing her here like this... for the first time since that terrible night in the ambulance... Did she even remember?

_He didn't ask if he could ride with her. He just climbed aboard with such assurance that the ambulance crew were off and rolling without a thought of stopping him. It helped that he managed to hold her hand and keep her calm while, at the same time, staying out of their way. He'd had a little practice at this sort of thing. “Rupert, Rupert,” she whispered. “I'm not ready to go yet. Not without...”_

_“Shush, you're fine. Darling, you're fine,” he'd assured her. The endearment came to his lips automatically, without the mediation of thought. “You're not going anywhere but to hospital.”_

_“No,” Jenny shook her head, “Don't lie to me, don't comfort me. There are things that need to be said.” For the first time it occurred to him that he should not be here at this moment, that he should have stayed with Buffy, to vouch for her and back her up if the police became suspicious of her 'eye witness' account of the 'unidentified male' shooter. For the first time it occurred to him that he might be witnessing a murder. To have left Buffy, at such a time as this, could hardly be justified as the act of a lover, let a lone a Watcher, never mind the father of her unborn child. Yet here he was, with Jenny, dying in this moment._

_“Rupert, I love you,” Jenny declared with quiet intensity. No, he should not be here. “Or at least... I_ _**loved** _ _you. I should have told you... I should have told you...” her eyelids fluttered shut. 'I loved you, too, you know,' stuck in his throat along side 'yes, you bloody well should have!' Whichever 'should have' she'd meant. A fine time now to talk of love! The whole thing was so very far past ruined._

A fact that had only gotten truer over the intervening months, Giles reminded himself firmly. He was glad she was alive. He could allow himself that much. For Buffy's sake as well as everyone else's. Anything more than that was... He was lucky to be alive and to have, as yet, been given no worse penance than to remain Buffy's official Watcher so that whatever continued to go wrong between now and the time she could be persuaded to return to duty would be on his watch and could be counted against him at the reckoning that was still inevitably to come. He ought to be counting his blessings. And getting back to the business of finding Buffy.

Suddenly, horribly, Giles realized that he did have a compelling reason to interact with Jenny at a level somewhat deeper than pointing her towards the nearest copying machine. “Faith,” he said, trying to sound causal. She tensed with eagerness to be directed, but didn't allow herself to straighten from her lounging posture to a degree that might have been taken for an admission that she was paying attention. “Go over to the cafeteria and ask them if they have any milk crates they're not using. Bring me back about a half a dozen if you can.”

Faith gave him a look. When he gave her directions that were clearly to the far side of campus, the look deepened. “Sure you don't need me to jog to Fondren and back?” she asked, “Give you even more quality time with...” she gestured slightly with her face and eyes towards the inner office.

“Just the milk crates, thanks,” he said stiffly. “Though you might as well get yourself some milk, as well,” he added dryly, “good for growing children, you know.”

“Yeah, well, I'm not the one growing children,” Faith retorted with a smile that was somehow both intimate and unkind. Giles stared at her, stone faced, expressing nothing but his firm expectation that at any moment she would go and do as she'd been told. With a minimum of obligatory groans and eye rolls, she did.

He walked quietly back to where Jenny stood, hunched over the copier, giving it her undivided attention as it did what it did and there was nothing she could do to speed it up. “Not celebrating the Holiday?” he asked from the doorway.

“Rupert don't do this,” she said plaintively, warningly, without looking up.

“Do what?” he said with innocence more overemphasized than feigned exactly. He wasn't trying to rekindle anything with Jenny, not even friendship, as such, whatever Faith thought. But, of course, he did want something from her, and they both knew it. Which, under the circumstances, was uninnocent enough. “I only wanted to erm... ask you erm... ask you about your summer... well, uh... as it might relate to... well the erm... the forces of darkness being ever a mutual danger to... to all of us, and each of us, well our various talents being...”

Jenny's body language was inpatient, though she still refused to look at him. He could hardly blame her. Somehow he was finding it insurmountably difficult to get to the point. What he had meant to ask suddenly seemed too much like interrogating her, with a possibility of ultimately accusing her of something. Which wasn't exactly what he meant to do. Apart from anything else, it was the wrong move socially, or politically or whatever you wanted to call it. A step away from the direction of shoring up alliances, however uneasy, among those few residents of Sunnydale even partly inclined or equipped to fight the forces of evil.

Jenny sighed and turned to face him at last. Regret and hostility struggled in her eyes. “I spent my summer vacation recovering from being shot in the stomach by a pregnant woman half my age over a guy,” she reminded him bitingly. “Sorry, but it's still a little hard for me to talk about. I like to pretend I still have s shred of dignity left somewhere.”

Giles blinked a little in the face of her scorching reply. “That's not... I wouldn't say...” he stammered. Buffy _had_ been possessed, of course, but still, Jenny's hard distillation of the facts contained enough truth that it was as hard to dismiss as it was to stomach.

“My own fault,” she reasoned bitterly, turning back to the copier to load more papers. “I should have...” she smiled a sad, cryptic smile, “set better boundaries for myself.”

~~~~

“No, Pete,” Anne repeated impatiently, casting a wary-of-being-publicly-embarrassed eye toward the three way-past-lunch-but-not-yet-dinner patrons scatter throughout the diner. “Still no. Always no. I don't know how many ways to say it. I do not want to be your date to your mother's wedding!” She tried to move as tactfully as possible around him to get to the time clock and officially end her shift. But he kept staying in her way. Somehow he looked both pissed and crestfallen. “It's not you...” she tried to explain. And then he was just pissed.

“Is it that guy?” he demanded. “That British guy? The one that knocked you up?”

Anne straightened her back, seeming to grow a foot rather than a mere quarter inch. It was her turn to be pissed. “He told you that!?!” she demanded. “Gi—he actually...”

“Not in so many words,” Pete admitted, softening altogether. “I just, when I gave him the bit about you being an older lady with a kid, he misunderstood and kind of started freaking out, and...”

“Oh boy,” Anne moaned, holding onto a table for support... or maybe for something to squeeze in frustrated rage. From the look on her face it was kind of hard to tell. It got a little easier when a piece of the solid wood tabletop came off in her hand, and she threw it hurriedly to the floor... hard enough that it zinged off a table leg and knocked over a chair. She looked at once terrified and terrifying. Pete instinctively flinched back from her, which only seemed to upset her more. “You know what... I gotta...” she stammered and ran out, pulling her apron and name tag off and throwing them to the floor behind her.

By the time it dawned on Pete what she'd meant to convey by discarding these items, his fear had cooled and his anger heated up enough for him to be able to shout after her, at the only slightly still swinging door, “Hey! That uniform's mine too, you little two-bit, jail-bait whore!”

~~~~

“See this, this right here, is why I can't talk to you!” Jenny shouted.

“I only asked you if you were being careful!” Giles tried not to shout back.

“Wow, nice choice of words there, G,” Faith interjected with vicious amusement, swinging her bare legs from the edge of the table.

“Oh... go... jog to Fondren and back, why don't you!?!” he very much shouted, whirling in her direction. “Can't you see no one wants you're spectacularly uninformed opinion!?!”

“Yeah,” Faith half snarled, “Whatev',” though she folded in on herself a little, like a kicked mutt, if he had bothered to notice. “Tell Mrs. Marlboro Light I went for a walk.”

“How can you talk to her that way, Rupert?” Jenny was already scolding him before the door had even closed behind Faith.

“Don't change the subject!” he shot back, too angry at the moment to take the opportunity for a step back. “We were talking about Buffy not—!” Giles spat a curse, took a deep breath, and corrected himself much more quietly, holding his voice steady in the face of his abject mortification, “We were talking about Willow.”

~~~~

Buffy sprinted from the diner. Tears streaked her vision. She didn't see, know, or care where she was going. Until she ran smack into the back of a demon, who was talking animatedly to a tall blond girl, trying to shove a piece of paper under her nose and convince her of something. “If you don't listen and come with me right now,” he'd been saying, “you'll be dead by— Oy! Hold on there, ma—! M-ma'am?” he stammered, realizing who had bumped into him.

The girl had been cringing away from Doyle into the arms of a young man who had run out of a nearby pawnshop to see what was going on. Now she turned and looked at Buffy (still clinging to her apparent boyfriend) with an oddly catlike expression, suddenly swinging from much too hysterical to much too calm under the circumstances. “Do I know you from somewhere?” she asked, “Hey! Aren't you Buffy Summers?”

Panicked, Buffy realized she did know the girl. She was one of Ford's damned fool followers, still following his example, finding herself another demon to get killed by. She was like a boil of Sunnydale, burst on the skin of L.A. It was all too much. Without a thought in her head of what would happen five minutes or even one minute later (for the girl or for herself) Buffy turned and fled as if in a fugue state. She didn't get far.

WHAM! For a moment Buffy literally didn't know what hit her. She was keenly aware that she was lying in the street with a crowd threatening to gather around her by the time that she determined, by logic more than memory, that what had hit her must have been a car. Buffy shot to her feet, ready to run and keep running. But this time she literally didn't make it one step. She was rooted to the spot, struck by what felt like the mother of all mistral cramps, plus a bonus shooting pain in her back. The pain was literally crippling. Buffy could barely manage to stay on her feet; taking a step was out of the question.

“Lily, call an ambulance,” Doyle instructed his erstwhile target, firmly and trying-to-be-calmly. “She's going into labor.” Buffy tried to look around to see who the demon was referring to. She'd have liked to have done something to help the poor woman, if only this horrible pain would let up. Then suddenly, unaccountably it did. Or, okay, maybe not so unaccountably, because there was a notable lack of other women crippled by massive but inconstant abdominal pain in the immediate vicinity. And it was even now becoming clear that she had not so much 'manage to stay on her feet' as been held up by Dolye.

“Oh Crap!” Buffy groaned. Like her life didn't suck enough. “Giles...” she mumbled aloud, but finished the thought only in her head, 'I am so gonna kick your ass.'

 


	8. Family Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I'd say the words 'let that be a lesson to you' are a tad redundant at this juncture." 
> 
> BtVS 2.5 "Reptile Boy"

“Oh! I think I got it this time!” Willow declared, “I think it's working!” The tiny pink dot on her screen glowed brightly over the city of Los Angeles, just as all available information suggested that it should. Without meaning too, several of the people holding hands in a circle around her hushed in anticipation, holding their breath. The dot flickered. “Keep chanting!” she instructed fiercely, as she clicked to enlarge the map and waited impatiently for the enlarged image to load.

Finally, after the longest ten seconds in all of human history, she could see a general neighborhood. “I knew it!” Giles half gasped half shouted. If looks really could kill it would have been a red letter day for people who secretly cherish antiquated stereotypes about Gypsies, though if this were the Olympics of Disproving Looks, Gale would certainly have taken the silver for merry old England and not for lack of competition. Willow had to shout at everyone, yet again to keep chanting. It was hard enough plowing through all their negative energy without all these stupid interruptions, and all from the 'older and wiser crowd', the people who'd done a least a little magic before and ought to know better.

Thank God at least something was _happening_ this time. The more balanced (boy, girl, boy, girl) arrangement of the chanters was clearly making a positive difference, though it made (almost) everyone uncomfortable, mainly because of who one of the 'boys' and all three of the 'girls' were. Once again, it was the elders, not the teenagers, who were the problem. Faith, the only enthusiastic volunteer for holding hands with Giles this go round, had ended up being the only woman who didn't get to do so. Marylbone had decided she'd rather do it herself, and Jenny had still felt too guilty about the whole Buffy-having-to-kill-Angel-because- _she_ -hadn't-told-anyone-about-the-new-and-improved-Restoration-Curse-sooner thing to be able to refuse. And after all that, Marylbone had _tried_ to take Oz's hand with such obviously distaste that (to her great relief) he'd had to make some thin excuse to trade places with Xander. But despite the Multilateral Mid-East Peace Talks level of seating chart wrangling, the magic itself was finally going smoothly. One more round of enlargement and. … “That's it!” Willow declared triumphantly. “Angels of Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital.”

“Good Lord!” gasped Mrs. Marylbone, who had live in Los Angeles half her adult life. “That's the worst hospital in the city. Why on Earth would she go there?” Her tone and diction were discomfitingly Gilsey, though Giles was the only one who didn't seem to notice.

“Let's make an enormous intuitive leap, shall we, and suppose that she might be having a medical emergency,” Giles retorted, acid over anxiety.

“Less chat, more chant!” Willow barked. “I'm still trying to lock in the tracker.”

~~~~

“Look, we've been waiting here almost two hours,” Doyle complained to the triage nurse in an I-don't-mean-to-bother-you- _but_ kind of tone, which was starting to wear just a little thin in the face of her hostile indifference. “I mean, clearly,” he tried to reason with her, “this young woman is having a baby or a miscarriage or a life threatening hemorrhage or something of that nature. If it's not _too_ radical a suggestion, I think perhaps she might ought to see a doctor.”

Finally, the nurse sort of looked in Buffy's direction, where she was sitting balled up in one of the bolted down plastic chairs, hugging her knees and trying to ignore Lily's whining, panicky efforts to comfort her. After commenting that she didn't even look pregnant, which was true, the nurse demanded, “How many weeks are you supposed to be anyway?”

“I don't know,” Buffy grunted miserably through clenched teeth, as the next contraction hit her. “I can't... I haven't... This can't be happening!”

“When was your last period?” the nurse huffed, exasperated.

“The whole last half of June and the first week of July,” Buffy answered, “But I haven't had sex since the last week of March.” Lily's boyfriend, 'Ricky' Something, tried unsuccessfully to swallow a laugh. He looked suitably ashamed, but Buffy was in no mood to be forgiving of the faults of others. “Don't you have an elsewhere to be!?!” she snapped, channeling her inner Cordelia.

The nurse, who was already not being shy about expressing her disbelief of Buffy's history or her impatience with being 'jerked around', took the opportunity to willfully misunderstand. “I have patients waiting who _want_ my help,” she snarled, and stomped off to bark questions at an elderly psychotic woman huddled in the corner muttering that she was 'no one'. “Well I can't put 'No One' on your paperwork!” she could be heard to scream at the poor woman.

Buffy had barely caught her breath after that last contraction when another one hit her with much less of a break than she had gotten used to over the course of the past hour and something or even the 'new normal' of the last twenty minutes or so. She felt an enormous feeling of pressure in the area of her pelvis and points south, as well as once again terrible pains in her back. “Damn it!” she shouted, nearly falling on the floor as a chunk of plastic broke off in her hand where she had gripped the side of her chair for support. The metal bar connecting the whole row of seating groaned and bent just a little as she leaned hard into the back of the chair. “I need _help_ here! Goddamnit, Giles!” she shouted, not caring whether she sounded crazy or not, “Giles, where are you?”

~~~~

“I have to go at once,” Giles declared, getting to his feet the moment the spell was finally completed, already pulling on his coat. “Willow, come on. Bring the... enchanted laptop. I—we can't lose track of her again.”

“Rupert wait a minute—” Jenny started to argue, saying something about calling Joyce, as Marylbone cut in, shouting over her, drowning her out.

“The Council have put ME in charge of this _entire_ situation—!” she reminded everyone, but especially Giles. Before she herself was drowned out by more confused shouting.

Not waiting for them to come to any sort of conclusion, Giles nodded in the direction of the doorway and grabbed Willow by the hand. Willow grabbed her purse and her laptop and let him pull her out the door, running to keep from being dragged. “I'll drive,” Oz volunteered, following them out into the hallway. By the time they reached the parking lot, Faith and Xander had caught up. They piled into the van with not so much as a by your leave. Oz and Giles nodded their agreement not to waste time in argument. The van was is motion with all five of them on board by the time the two shouting women realized that they were alone in the library.

Silence reigned for a few moments, underlain by the hum of tires on asphalt. “You know, we probably should have called her mom,” Xander suggested about the time they hit the open freeway. Everyone else's silence continued unabated. Of course, Willow and Giles were up front with Oz, playing Navigator and Captain to his Pilot, and so, might or might not have heard him, but Faith was giving him a look like he'd said something stupid, which in his experience, people who did that were usually right, so he figured he had.

“Maybe we should stop somewhere and call her now,” Xander persisted in suggesting after another minute or two. Faith glared at him, wondering if he met the actual definition of a moron.

“G-man wants to actually get to see his honey, _before_ her mom calls the cops,” Faith hissed exasperatedly, not wanting to let one of those every-body's-tense-but-can't-even-hit-anything-Thanksgiving-type fights get started in a vehicle she was currently trapped in.

Xander looked at her like a monkey trying to figure out how a cell phone works. “Who wants—wait, what?” he stammered. He hadn't even made it as far as denial, Faith realized. He was honestly confused. It was too pathetic even to be funny.

“ _Buffy_ , you moron,” Faith explained in an even quieter undertone, as patiently as possible... for her. “He's all worried she's having his baby or losing it like the last one or something.”

“WAIT, WHAT!?!” Xander repeated, this time getting enough volume that it was impossible for those in the front seat to pretend that they hadn't heard him or even that they didn't realize he was losing it. “No! No! That's not—you're crazy! Giles, tell her she's—why aren't you telling her she's crazy?” … and then he got it. “Oh, God,” he moaned, “Oh God, no! I'm such an idiot!”

“Oh for God's sake,” Giles groused, “Do you actually recognize the concept of something _not_ being about you?” Xander's storm of temper raged over, around and through, Faith's snarking contempt for his naivety and Willow's muddled, simultaneous defense of her two favorite guys from each other. “Could we just consider all the indignant, self-righteous shouting as read for once!” Giles (self-righteously, indignantly) out shouted all of them. “I'm trying to think!”

“And I'm trying to drive,” Oz agreed coolly in the instant of silence that followed. But, naturally, shouting was renewed from all corners, almost instantly.

“We should be watching the fucking Rose Bowl,” Faith declared, to no one in particular, never one to be the only person not to say what she thought. “It's like a Goddamned family reunion in here!”

Oz sounded oddly calm and amused when he answered her, under rather than over the sound of everyone else shouting, “Welcome to the Goddamned family.”

~~~~

“Oh my God!” the doctor shouted in disbelief. “Why didn't somebody tell me about this sooner?” he demanded, apparently of Doyle. 

“They said they didn't need any help,” the nurse interjected defensively. Doyle helped Buffy up to follow the doctor into a little curtained cubical. Lily and Ricky were left behind to get into a loud, pointless shouting match with the nurse about who had really said what when.

“I shouldn't be walking,” Buffy complained, “There's something, like, sicking out.”

“Oh, shit,” the doctor cursed, and ordered Doyle to lift her up and carry her to the waiting gurney, where he wasted no time getting her panties off and having a look. “Oh, shit,” he repeated.

“What?” Buffy demanded, truly panicked now, “What is it?”

“It's a placenta,” he mumbled, almost to himself, “or part of one.”

“Oh, shit,” Buffy agreed. She did not know a whole wonderful lot about childbirth, but she was pretty sure having the afterbirth before the birth-birth was not at all or in any way a good thing. The doctor buzzed someone and hollered for them to get the OR ready, then grabbed someone by the shoulder and demanded a fetal heart monitor be hooked up at once. As soon as it was attached, he didn't like the sound of it, which worried Buffy even more.

“Call Giles,” she shouted at Doyle, as he was left behind in the ER, otherwise without purpose, not even having the standing, as the nurses had already explained to him, to get word if she lived or died. Before he could have a thought to the contrary, he had promised, and she was gone. Of course, it was a promise that might have been easier to keep if he'd had a phone number. Or a single buggering clue who 'Giles' was. It was really a damned shame you couldn't have a vision when you actually wanted one.

~~~~

“Is she leaving?” Willow worried aloud, threatening to set off another wave of panic for Giles. “No, no not leaving, just moving around the hospital.” She reached out and touched the screen with one finger, making direct contact with the glowing pink dot that meant Buffy. Willow pulled her finger back with a short, sharp scream, as if she had been burned, only more so. Now Giles and Xander were both panicking, and both shouting again. Faith had to admit, she was getting a little worried herself, and she didn't even know the girl. Which made it kind of stupid to care, really, but it was hard not to in this atmosphere.

“What is it?” Oz asked calmly.

“Pain,” Willow explained, “and fear. Lots of it. I'm going to try again,” she announced miserably after a little while, but then she hesitated. If she was waiting for someone to tell her that wouldn't be necessary, Faith had a feeling she'd be in for a long wait. Finally, the redhead bit her lip and poked gingery at the dot on the screen again, obviously relieved not to be quite as overwhelmed with sensation this time. “I guess it was just another contraction,” she offered. They're getting closer together I think. Maybe they're putting her in a room or something.”

~~~~

“Let me ask it this way,” the surgeon tried again, while the anesthesiologist was doing his thing, desperate for some information about what to expect. This girls uterus was tipped so far back that there was no way to get a good look at anything on the ultrasound, except maybe transvaginally, which was so not happening right now. There was also no way to palpate anything through those six-pack abs. She had put on a little bit of fat, sure, but she had put it on over her rock-hard musculature, like a tiny blond sumo wrestler. “Did you have normal, regular monthly cycles at some point in the past?” he asked.

Buffy was quiet for a long moment, looking down at her hands. He had to ask that. Of course he had to ask that. “Yeah,” Buffy mumbled, “Like clockwork, since I was twelve and a half, until I got raped last year and had to have an abortion. It was... it wasn't his fault. I mean I knew he was pos—psychotic, I should have been—even my mom doesn't know and my dad only knows...” 

The doctor took a deep breath. Noticing his pained expression, Buffy had to fight the urge to apologize for making him feel uncomfortable, for going into irrelevant details. Instead, she plowed forward with her history, hoping it was helping him somehow. 

“That was... I had the... operation last June, fifteen months ago," she explained. "My periods have been all weird ever since, but I had two in January, starting on the 1st and the 21st, and then I found out I was pregnant when I broke my arm in February, you know, I had to get X-rays... then after the miscarriage in March, noting until June, which I told you about that already.”

The doctor's eyes narrowed in thought. "This 'second period' in January...” he asked, “was it on the light side.”

Buffy's brow furrowed, “Yeah, _seriously._ Why?” she asked.

He answered her with a question. “Were you sexually active _between_ the time of these two episodes of bleeding?”

 _The touch of cold skin on hot; hunger that was like panic and at the same time like the pull of the black hole at the center of the universe. Death filled her in cold spurts, making her alive like a Waking Beauty, Snow White no more, whatever came after innocence. And then he was gone, but her needs weren't. And she was not the only suddenly lonely soul in that empty library at night._ Buffy nodded. “Yeah,” she managed, without making eye contact. “There was... this one guy.”

~~~~

“Dear God!” Giles cried. By the time he had wrenched the computer out of Willow's hands and slammed it shut, she was delirious and writhing in agony. Oz stopped the van on a flat stretch of highway that had the whole desert for a shoulder. By the time they had carried her to the back and laid her down, she was calmer and more responsive but still drained and basically out of it.

“Keep going,” she whispered gripping Giles's hand, eyes fluttering open for a moment, “Buffy needs you. I'll be... I just need to rest.”

Giles looked to Oz as if waiting for him to approve her instructions. Oz nodded. “It's just the magic,” he said, “I've... seen her like this before. He handed Giles the keys. “You drive,” he said, “I'll stay with her. Giles nodded. Without a word of discussion, Faith climbed into the front seat to make more room in the back. In theory, Xander probably should have done the same, but no one felt like complaining when he didn't, except for maybe Oz, and he was a world champion at holding his tongue.

The final hour of the trip passed mostly in silence. Halfway through, Willow sat up and made polite noises, assuring everyone that she was 'fine, just tired.' Even Faith managed to basically behave herself, keeping her jokes about finally being 'alone' with Giles again oblique and minimal. Even she seemed somewhat subdued by the circumstances. When they got downtown, it wasn't hard to find the hospital. It was the nearest one to Helen's Kitchen, of course, and there were signs to it the way there always are with hospitals. The visitors parking was a bit of a hike, but then, only slightly more so than the patient parking, and somehow Giles couldn't stomach even the theoretical possibility of getting Oz's van towed on top of everything else.

Giles was tempted to insist that the young people stay in the van, but in this heat, it was impossible. They all trouped through the parking lot together. At least Willow did seem some better, perfectly steady on her feet. When they passed a certain black SUV illegally parked in the staff lot, right next to the building, they all exchanged worried looks and walked a little faster. But Joyce hadn't gotten far ahead of them. She was still at the front desk, arguing with the charge nurse and a hefty security guard, who seemed eager to get a chance to back the nurse up.

“Well, all I know,” the woman said, is that her father is listed on the paperwork and she called him, when she couldn't get a hold of that 'Giles' person, the baby's father. It doesn't say anything here about any 'mother.'”

“Well if you don't _believe_ me you shouldn't tell me that much!” Joyce declared exasperated.

Giles sighed, he was in for a good deal more than a pound now. He might as well make the best of it by at least being useful in the situation. “Look,” he suggested, walking up to the desk, “Why not just call upstairs and ask Buffy or Hank...”

“Excuse me,” Joyce said, whirling to face him. “Who asked you to come here?”

“Buffy, evidently, did,” he replied coolly, “though I admit I had no way of knowing that. And you knew damned well I was coming and why, so what is the pointing of pretending surprise? I expect your car will be towed, incidentally, if you don't move it, so why don't you take a breath and calm—!”

“Hey, you can't talk to her like that!” Xander objected.

“Mr. Giles? Willow? Xander? Is that you?” called a vaguely familiar young blond woman from an adjacent waiting area. She walked their way without waiting for an answer, two anxious looking young men following.

“Who are _any_ of you people!?!” the security guard demanded loudly. “Settle down before I throw all of you out!”

“I'm her _mother_!” Joyce insisted, yet again, almost literally fighting mad now.

“And I'm 'that Giles person',” Giles explained dryly. “Look, he added to the rest of the entourage, "you all go and find a seat. We'll handle this.”

“There's no _we_!” Joyce nearly spat, fists clinched at her sides as though she might be ready to take a swing at him pretty soon. But she took a deep breath and didn't. She apologized to the security guard and basically promised to be a good girl if only he would call up and ask Hank to vouch for her, rather than throwing everyone out.

Five minutes later, the word came down. “Just these two can come up,” the nurse instructed the security guard. Joyce looked like she wanted very much to object, but she swallowed her pride and bit her tongue. Hank was sitting at Buffy's bedside. He stood when they entered the room, looking tired and vigilant. Buffy, for her part, looked tired and proud and happy and relieved, holding her tiny swaddled infant in the crook of her arm. Then Hank looked sort of relieved too. “I told you she didn't mean it,” he whispered to Buffy, just loud enough for everyone to hear, squeezing her free hand.

Joyce froze. Her heart just about broke. Tears rolled down her face, and Buffy's too. Because actually, 'don't even think about coming back,' did sound a dreadful lot like 'never call me, no matter how bad things get'. Hank gave Joyce his chair and there were 'no _I'm_ sorrys' and leaning, physically awkward, half hugs all round. For everyone except Giles. 

For a moment, he remained standing in the doorway, looking puppy-dog-eyed miserable. “She looks like you,” Hank said after a bit. And if his voice was not exactly overflowing with warmth and friendliness, it was not exactly boiling with venom either.

“I missed you,” Buffy said, her eyes suddenly at least as big and sad as his were.

“I missed you too,” Giles all but whispered, his voice so heavy with emotion that he almost feared it would break. “I tried to find you, but...”

“I didn't want to be found,” Buffy finished, as ever, letting him off the hook.

“And now?” he asked, walking over to stand next to her bed at last, opposite both her parents.

“Now... I'm glad you found me anyway,” she said. And now Giles was choking back tears, holding them in by dent of sheer British stubbornness. He reached out one tentative hand and gently caressed the the baby's cheek. His daughter's cheek. The half formed though nagged at him that he wanted to have had the chance to touch her at least this once before he said what he'd made up him mind to say next. He feared it might be his only chance. One or two tears got past him after all. For a moment this, the way thing were just now, seemed too much to risk. But faint hearts never had won fair maidens (or mothers either) and they were not likely to start now.

“There's something I need to ask you,” he explained. “In the circumstances, something I need to ask all of you, and I suppose I could wait but... I don't necessarily expect an answer today... from any of you but...” Giles sank to one knee beside Buffy's bed. Buffy's eyes went wide. Joyce sucked in a breath and looked as though she might choke on it. But Hank seemed to have expected what was happening, and seemed, if by no means overjoyed, a least accepting. Buffy was frankly sobbing, by the time he finally got the question out, “Buffy, if you'll have me,” he said, “and if your parents will consent, I want you to be my wife. And as soon as reasonably possible. I don't want to wait another four or five months. I want us to be a family.”

Suddenly, Buffy squared her shoulders, sniffed back a few last tears, looked at him and laughed. “Well what do you call this, you big dope?” she asked, reaching and taking his hand in such a way that their arms met in an embrace of the child in her arms. “Congratulations,” she said. “Welcome to the family reunion.”

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to Gilescandy for doing the beta on almost all of this. All mistakes are either those I stubbornly insisted upon making or in the part that I never got to her because I got behind on meeting my posting dates.
> 
> For more information on Canon Compliance/Divergence and Story Mechanics and Themes, see series description.


End file.
